We are anonymous, we are legion

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

Bangalore CryptoParty!

praskrishna — 2013-01-06T13:47:02Z

Care about your privacy and online security? Want to fight against pervasive governmental surveillance and corporate invasions of privacy? The Centre for Internet & Society invites you to the CryptoParty tonight (Friday) at 6.00 p.m. Make sure to bring friends (and your laptop and smart phones)!

We will discuss, install and use digital security and privacy tools and practices.

Hosts

Thejesh GN
Kaustubh Srikanth
Pranesh Prakash

Details

We Will Provide

Food and drinks: Snacks - Samosas + Kachoris + Biscuits + Tea + Soft Drinks
Software: Security-in-a-box toolkits + Ubuntu Live USBs + software + internet connection
Expertise: Kaustubh Srikanth + Thejesh GN + Pranesh Prakash

You need to bring

Your own laptop (highly recommended)
Desire to learn about secure and private communications and storage (mandatory! :D)
Expertise, to share with others (if possible)

Intro

(20 mins)

Privacy vs. convenience
Importance of Free and Open Source Software and Open Standards
Basics of Passwords

Choosing secure passwords

Dropbox Register Page

Storing comes later
2FA - Google Authenticator

Securing online Identities

Show and tell

Browsing (45 mins)
(5 mins)

Firefox (multiple platforms) / offline

(15 mins):

AdBlockPlus
RequestPolicy
HTTPSEverywhere
Ghostery / DoNotTrackMe
Noscript

(5 mins)

Anti-Google Surveillance

DuckDuckGo
GoogleSharing

(10 mins)

Password management

Keepass + Password Safe
Cloud Services

LastPass
Keepass + Dropbox

Email + IM (1 hour)
(10 mins)

Thunderbird (multiple platforms) / available offline

Enigmail

(30 mins)

GPG4Win + GPGTools / offline
Seahorse (on Ubuntu Fresh Install)
Enigmail + Key Management (Kaustubh)
Key-signing party!

(15 mins)

Instant Messaging with OTR

Pidgin + Adium / offline
OTR / offline

Tell (27 mins)
(5 mins)

Tor (Pranesh)

(5 mins)

VPNs and SSH tunnel

RiseUp (Kaustubh)
SSH tunneling using AWS / RackSpace (Thej)

(12 mins)

Mobiles

APG + K9 (Pranesh)
WhisperCore (Kaustubh mentions)
Text Secure (Thej)
Gibbberbot (Pranesh)

(3 mins)

Full-disk encryption

Ubuntu (Pranesh demoes quickly)
BitLocker
TrueCrypt

(2 mins)

Virtual machines

VirtualBox (Kaustubh demoes quickly)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/bangalore-crypto-party

Bangalore Chapter Meet of DSCI

sunil — 2015-09-09T01:40:56Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) will host the Bangalore Chapter Meeting of Data Security Council of India (DSCI) on September 26, 2015 at its Bangalore office in Domlur. The event will be held from 2.30 p.m. to 5.30 p.m.

After the Nasscom cyber security task force meeting held at Wipro in June, followed by DSCI Best Practices meet in July, we now have the next chapter meeting at CIS.

Speakers

The first speaker will be Melissa Hathaway, Commissioner, Global Commission for Internet Governance. She is an internationally distinguished cyber security expert and has worked as cyber security adviser in two US Presidential Administrations, and is the former acting Senior Director for cyberspace at the National Security Council in the US. The topic she will be speaking on is "Connected Choices".

The second speaker will be Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, CIS (Center for internet & Society). Sunil is a renowned thought leader when it comes to internet governance, cyber space & its interface with civil society and actively contributes to DSCI and other forums. He will be presenting on "Anonymity in Cyberspace" - the SIG that he led over last 8 months along with a diverse group of members from the industry in Bangalore.

Agenda

Time	Topic
2.30 p.m. - 2.45 p.m.	Recent Developments and Updates from DSCI
2.45 p.m. - 4.00 p.m.	Srinivas P. (Anchor): DSCI Bangalore Chapter
4.00 p.m. - 5.00 p.m.	Melissa Hathaway: Connected Choices
5.00 p.m. - 5.30 p.m.	Sunil Abraham: Anonymity in Cyberspace

This will be followed by High Tea & Networking.

For participation, please send your email confirmation to Rajesh of Infosys at Rajesh_K18@infosys.com

Since seats are limited, the participation will be restricted to first 50 confirmations. We had to organize it on a Saturday, due to Melissa’s availability – I’m sure many of you who know about her as expert security speaker, will not see weekend as a constraint to attend. Look forward to meeting you at CIS.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/bangalore-chapter-meet-of-dsci-september-26-2015

Bangalore Chapter Meet - DSCI

praskrishna — 2015-11-22T12:10:16Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is glad to host the Bangalore Chapter Meet of DSCI on Tuesday, December 1, 2015, from 2.30 p.m. to 5.30 p.m.

Pronab Mohanty, Inspector General of Police, will give a talk on Cybercrimes. Given his rich experience in handling cyber-crimes, participants are expected to immensely benefit from his talk. Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, CIS will present the outcome of his SIG, the study period for which got recently concluded after about six months of in-depth study - "Anonymity in Cyberspace" - a topic that touches our daily lives when we browse internet. The session will also include developments from the recent Jaipur International ISO Conference.

Agenda

Time	Detail
2.30 3.00	Recent developments, updates from DSCI and SIGs: P. Srinivas
3.00 4.00	Anonymity in Cyberspace: Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, CIS
4.00 5.00	Talk on Cybercrimes: Pronab Mohanty, Inspector General of Police, Karnataka
5.00 5.30	High Tea and Networking

Since seats are limited, the participation will be restricted to first 50 confirmations. Please rush your email confirmation to Rajesh_K18@infosys.com

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/bangalore-chapter-meet-dsci

Bangalore + Social Good

praskrishna — 2013-09-25T07:43:58Z

In conjunction with The Social Good Summit held in New York City on September 22 - 24, Ashoka India, IDEX + Green Lungi are partnering to host the Bangalore + Sustainability event! The Social Good Summit aims to explore creative ways that technology can be leveraged for positive social change. Green Lungi in collaboration with IDEX and Ashoka is holding the event at CIS, Bangalore on September 21.

Sharath Chandra Ram, a researcher at CIS is one of the panelists. A brief abstract of his talk is given below:

"Are digital networked technologies adopted or used in the same way globally across all communities? Were social networks and apps across Twitter or Facebook really that pivotal in the mass citizen uprisings of the recent past? In this session, we shall see how it is essential to consider cultural specificities while designing technological interventions. Furthermore, I shall discuss how an effective strategy for citizen activism is not that which relies solely on virtual networks, but one that bridges networks, across different mediums, to engage offline citizens as much as the online. There will be a few live demonstrations of solutions we developed at the Centre for Internet and Society which embrace openness in pervasive technologies that enable us to bridge this crucial trans-medial interface."

The Bangalore + Sustainability event will focus on devising creative applications of technologies to confront sustainability challenges. We believe that young people have the power to affect change, and its time that we provide them with more opportunities to solve the challenges they see around them. This event is a first step in the direction of developing these problem-solving skills in our young people. Through an innovative Make-a-thon format, participants will engage in developing creative tech-based solutions to everyday challenges like road safety, waste management, water management, improving green cover and safer spaces for women.

Event Format and Details

1:45 - 2:00 -- Registration + Welcome

2:00 - 2:45 -- Panel Discussion + Q&A

Panelists will give a brief talk (5 - 7 minutes), posing questions for participants to consider around the intersection of technology + behavioral change + sustainability + youth engagement. A panelist from each of these sectors will set the context for the Jam to follow:

Sustainability
Communications/Design
Technology
Young Changemakers

Click to download the event brochure for details on the panelists/speakers

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/bangalore-social-good

Ban on pornography temporary, says government

pranesh — 2015-09-13T08:46:24Z

The government has taken a dramatic U-turn from its stated position on internet pornography.

The article was published in Business Standard on August 4, 2015. Pranesh Prakash has been quoted.

A year after conveying to the Supreme Court that a blanket ban on internet pornography was not possible, through the department of electronics and information technology, it has asked internet providers to disable 857 websites that carry adult content. A senior official from the department of telecommunications (DoT) said the ban was a temporary measure, till the final order is announced by the apex court on August 10.

The government is looking at setting up an ombudsman to oversee cyber content, which will have representatives from NGOs, child activists and the government. The DoT official said, “There has to be some kind of regulatory oversight away from the government intervention… An ombudsman might be set up for overseeing cyber related content issues.”

The genesis of the current notification lies in the public interest litigation (PIL) filed by advocate Vijay Panjwani in April 2013. The PIL has sought curbs on these websites on the internet, especially the ones showing child pornography. The senior DoT official conveyed that the blocking of 857 websites was in compliance with the SC directive asking for measures to block porn sites, particularly those dealing with child pornography.

The July 31 notification from DoT has advised internet service licensees to disable content on 857 websites, as the content "hosted on these websites relates to morality and decency as given in Article 19(2) of the Constitution of India". The government had stated last year that it was not technologically feasible to monitor such contents as it would require physical intervention, which would impact data speeds.

In December 2014, the government had approached telecom providers and internet service providers to help identify such sites, but the service providers did not cooperate. Consequently, the government has gone ahead and identified 857 websites. However, the government has not given any detail as what was the criterion to identify such websites.

Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, says DoT has used the provision of 79 (3) (b) of the IT Act, which is a convoluted Section that the intermediatory (ISPs) may lose protection from liability. This section is very convulated, the provisions for website blocking does not allow blocking porn. In section 69 (a), the entire procedure is that it allows an opportunity for the blocked website to be heard. “I can't comment on the reasons that the government for doing this. I know the order says the ban relates to morality, decency," adds Prakash.

Last year, the government took a position that said blocking these websites was not feasible, given that these sites are hosted outside India. In case of any ban, these sites can be relocated within hours to bypass it. Pavan Duggal, an advocate who specialises in cyber laws, has called the disablement 'cosmetic,' as it will not have the requisite deterrent effect. Duggal says: "This is a lost battle from the word go, as it is impossible to disable access permanently."

Watching such content in India is currently not an offence and, thus, the government is invoking “morality and decency” while seeking a curb on a fundamental right — Freedom of Speech & Expression. Under Article 19 (2) of the Constitution, the state can curb a fundamental right in order to maintain public order, decency or morality.

TO BAN OR NOT TO BAN

2013

Advocate Vijay Panjwani & Kamlesh Vaswani file PIL seeking curbs on internet pornography

Aug 2014

Supreme Court bench under Chief Justice R M Lodha agreed with the PIL and sought strict laws to curb online content

8 Jul 2015

Chief Justice of India H L Dattu upholds personal liberty and refuses to pass an interim order. Asks government to take a stand on the issue
CJI, heading a three-judge Bench, asks government to a detailed affidavit within four weeks

Jul 31

DoT sends notification seeking ban on 857 websites
Currently, there are no laws banning internet pornography in India, other than those related to children
Government’s stated position has been that it is difficult to curb online content

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-august-4-2015-ban-on-pornography-temporary-says-government

Bali meet to discuss Internet governance issues

praskrishna — 2013-10-23T08:29:23Z

Four-day event hosted by Internet Governance Forum to also discuss Internet access and diversity, privacy, security.

This article by Moulishree Srivastava was published in Livemint on October 22, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Representatives of governments around the world, technology executives and activists will discuss issues such as Internet access and diversity, privacy, security, inter-governmental corporation, and Internet governance at a four-day event hosted by the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) that begins on Tuesday in Bali, Indonesia.

J. Satyanarayana, secretary, ministry of communications and information technology, confirmed India’s participation in the forum and said the country would be represented by Dr Govind, a senior director and head of department, e-infrastructure and Internet governance division, department of information technology.

“We will also be taking part in a working group on Internet governance and enhanced cooperation, which will be convened by the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development in November,” said Satyanarayana.

“IGF is a valuable learning forum wherein different stakeholders can discuss Internet governance policy issues without any antagonism. Other fora for Internet policy like ICANN, WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization), ITU (International Telecommunication Union), etc., are places where international law and policy are developed, and do not allow for such learning because negotiations are always very acrimonious. Since IGF is only meant for learning, it does not directly address the global policy vacuum that exists for cyber crime, data protection and privacy,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, who will be participating in the Bali event.

“Indian government, private sector, civil society, technical and academic community can become more competent and effective through such a dialogue in other multilateral and multi-stakeholder fora where international Internet standards, policies and laws are formulated. It also helps the stakeholders contribute to the development of internationally interoperable domestic policy,” he added.

In 2006, the UN secretary general established a small secretariat in Geneva to assist him in the convening of IGF. The first meeting was convened in October-November 2006 in Athens. In December 2010, IGF’s mandate was extended for five years.

In its eighth edition, IGF will have detailed discussions on issues such as free flow of information on the Internet, regulatory approaches to privacy, and protection of interests of individuals and communities in cyberspace, Internet surveillance and legal framework for cyber crime, said the forum in a statement on its website.

During the four-event, for instance, one of the workshops “will explore what core principles and strategies are needed to achieve a balanced and fair approach to data protection that is effective internationally and regionally”, according to IGF.

Some of the prominent speakers in the event include Jari Arkko, chairman, Internet Engineering Task Force, Finland; Virat Bhatia, president, South Asia, AT&T Inc.; Chris Painter, coordinator for cyber issues, US department of state; Karen Mulberry, policy adviser, Internet Society; and Matthew Shears, director of Internet policy and human rights, Center for Democracy and Technology.

According to industry estimates, over 2.5 billion Internet users interact in shared cross-border online spaces where they can post content potentially accessible worldwide.

“No clear frameworks exist yet to handle the tensions between these competing normative orders or values and enable peaceful cohabitation in cross-border cyberspace. This challenge constitutes a rare issue of common concern for all stakeholder groups,” said IGF on its website.

According to a UN estimate, nearly 40% of the world’s population will be online by the end of 2013. “The Internet has become an essential tool for the creation of jobs and the delivery of basic public services,” said the UN undersecretary-general for economic and social affairs, Wu Hungbo, in a statement, adding that it is also essential “for improving access to knowledge and education, for empowering women, for enhancing transparency, and for giving marginalized populations a voice in decision-making processes”.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/livemint-moulishree-srivastava-october-22-2013-bali-meet-to-discuss-internet-governance-issues

Balancing vigilance and privacy

praskrishna — 2013-09-05T10:53:28Z

As the government steps up its surveillance capabilities, the entire social contract between the state and citizens is being reformulated, with worrying consequences.

This article by Prashant Jha was published in the Hindu on August 18, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The Indian state is arming itself with both technological capabilities and the institutional framework to track the lives of citizens in an unprecedented manner.

A new Centralised Monitoring System (CMS) is in the offing, which would build on the already existing mechanisms. As The Hindu reported on June 21, this would allow the government to access in real-time any mobile and fixed line conversation, SMS, fax, website visit, social media usage, Internet search and email, and will have ‘unmatched capabilities of deep search surveillance and monitoring’.

Civil society groups and citizens expressed concern about the government’s actions, plans, and intent at a discussion organised by the Foundation for Media Professionals, on Saturday.

The context

Usha Ramanathan, a widely respected legal scholar, pointed to the larger political context which had permitted this form of surveillance. It stemmed, she argued, from a misunderstanding of the notion of sovereignty. “It is not the government, but the people who are sovereign.” Laws and the Constitution are about limiting the power of the state, but while people were being subjected to these restrictions, the government itself had found ways to remain above it – either by not having laws, or having ineffective regulators. States knew the kind of power they exercised over citizens, with the result that ‘impunity had grown’.

“There is also a complete breakdown of the criminal justice system,” Ms Ramanathan said. This had resulted in a reliance on extra-judicial methods of investigation, and ‘scape-goating’ had become the norm. ‘National security’ had been emphasised, re-emphasised, and projected as the central goal. “We haven’t paused to ask what this means, and the extent to which we have been asked to give up personal security for the sake of national security.” It was in this backdrop that technology had advanced by leaps, and made extensive surveillance possible.

The implications are enormous. The data is often used for purposes it is not meant for, including political vendetta, keeping track of rivals, corporates, and digging out facts about a citizen when he may have antagonised those in power.

Pranesh Prakash, director of the Centre of Internet and Society (CIS) looked back at the killing of Haren Pandya, the senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader in Gujarat. Mr Pandya was using the SIM card of a friend, and it was by tracking the SIM, and through it his location, that the Gujarat government got to know that Mr Pandya had deposed before a commission and indicted the administration for its role in the riots. Eventually, he was found murdered outside a park in Ahmedabad. The Gujarat Police had accessed call details of 90,000 phones.

It is also not clear whether mining this kind of data has been effective for the national security purposes, which provide the reason for doing it in the first place. Saikat Datta, resident editor of Daily News and Analysis, and an expert on India’s intelligence apparatus, said a core problem was the absence of any auditing and over sight. “There needs to be a constant review of the number of calls, emails under surveillance, with questions about whether it is yielding results. But this does not happen, probably because a majority is not for counter-terrorism. There would be trouble if you build accountability mechanisms.” When he sought information under RTI around precisely such issues, he was denied information on the grounds that it would strengthen ‘enemies of the state’.

Anja Kovacs, who works with the Internet Democracy Project, said this form of “mass surveillance” criminalised everybody since it was based on the assumption that each citizen was a “potential criminal”. She also pointed out that having “more information” did not necessarily mean it was easier to address security threats – there was intelligence preceding the Mumbai attacks, but it was not acted upon. She added, “Most incidents have been resolved by traditional intelligence. Investing in agencies, training them better could be more effective.”

Bring in the caveats

Few argue that the state is not entitled to exercise surveillance at all. In fact, a social contract underpins democratic states. Citizens agree to subject some of their rights to restrictions, and vest the state with the monopoly over instruments and use of violence. In turn, the state – acting within a set of legal principles; being accountable to citizens; and renewing its popular legitimacy through different measures, including elections – provides order and performs a range of developmental functions.

This framework, citizens and civil liberty groups worry, is under threat with governments appropriating and usurping authority to conduct unprecedented surveillance. Citizen groups, technology and privacy experts came together globally to draft the International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communication Surveillance.

It prescribed that any restriction to privacy through surveillance must be ‘legal’; it must be for a ‘legitimate aim’; it must be ‘strictly and demonstrably necessary’; it must be preceded by showing to an established authority that other ‘less invasive investigative techniques’ have been used; it must follow ‘due process’; decisions must be taken by a ‘competent judicial authority’; there must be ‘public oversight’ mechanisms; and ‘integrity of communications and systems’ should be maintained. (Full text available on www.necessaryandproportionate.org)Mr Prakash of CIS, which has done extensive work on surveillance and privacy issues, said, “An additional principle must be collection limitation or data minimisation.” Giving the instance of Indian Railways seeking the date of birth from a customer booking a ticket, Mr Prakash said this was not information which was necessary. But it could be used by hackers and many other agencies to access an individual’s private transactions in other areas. The UPA government is finalising a privacy Bill, but its final version is not yet public, and it is not clear how far the government would go in protecting citizen rights.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-august-19-2013-prashant-jha-balancing-vigilance-and-privacy

Ayodhya trending on Twitter sparks censorship concerns

praskrishna — 2012-12-12T10:38:01Z

On the 20th anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition, the ShauryaDiwas, Ayodhya and Babri Masjid hashtags were trending on Twitter all day, with almost 2,500 messages sent over 48 hours.

Surabhi Agarwal's article was published in LiveMint on December 6, 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

The tag ShauryaDiwas was used by supporters of the demolition and was used in half the total number of tweets.

Experts said the public display of extreme views on a social networking platform has the potential to create social unrest, leaving the government with few options but to regulate content, in turn fuelling the Internet censorship debate further.

A senior government official said that in a situation in which there are serious national security implications, the government has no option but to "block content" in order to stop communal sentiment from flaring up.

According to social web analytics firm Social Hues, the tweets reached an audience of 456,000 followers. However, according to Vinita Ananth, chief executive of Social Hues, there were also messages that "condemned the call for ShauryaDiwas” tagging it ShameDiwas. "New platforms like Twitter are providing real-time feedback on public sentiment, which is unprecedented."

Ashis Nandy, political and social analyst, said that even though very few Indians are on platforms such as Twitter, communications over them give a hint of what a certain section of the society is thinking about.

"It is a small representation of the middle class, which is driven by ideology and some of the people with extreme opinions may also belong to this group, so perhaps it could have some security implications," he said.

Fringe groups such as those above tend to take extreme positions to get attention, said Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore-based research organization, the Centre for Internet and Society.

Having learnt their lessons after the recent Assam-related panic, intelligence agencies are now keeping a close watch on the Internet, another government official said.

"If necessary, posts will be removed through legitimate ways," the official said, adding that a debate was underway about how to strike a balance between freedom of speech and the lawful requirement of agencies. "Mischief by a few people creates nuisance in society. The government is now looking for ways through which it can regionally block or remove inflammatory tweets. We don’t want to curb freedom of speech and the government doesn’t have any such intentions either," the official said.

Hate messages on social media had sparked a panic exodus of people from the north-east from cities such as Bangalore, Pune and Chennai in August.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/livemint-december-6-2012-surabhi-agarwal-ayodhya-trending-on-twitter-sparks-censorship-concerns

Automated Facial Recognition Systems and the Mosaic Theory of Privacy: The Way Forward

Arindrajit Basu, Siddharth Sonkar — 2020-01-02T14:12:38Z

Arindrajit Basu and Siddharth Sonkar have co-written this blog as the third of their three-part blog series on AI Policy Exchange under the parent title: Is there a Reasonable Expectation of Privacy from Data Aggregation by Automated Facial Recognition Systems?

The Mosaic Theory of Privacy

Whether the data collected by the AFRS should be treated similar to face photographs taken for the purposes of ABBA is not clear in the absence of judicial opinion. The AFRS would ordinarily collect significantly more data than facial photographs during authentication. This can be explained with the help of the mosaic theory of privacy.

The mosaic theory of privacy suggests that data collected for long durations of an individual can be qualitatively different from single instances of observation. It argues that aggregating data from different instances can create a picture of an individual which affects her reasonable expectation of privacy. This is because a mere slice of information reveals a lot less if the same is contextualised in a broad pattern — a mosaic.

The mosaic theory of privacy does not find explicit reference in Puttaswamy II. The petitioners had argued that seeding of Aadhaar data into existing databases would bridge information across silos so as to make real time surveillance possible. This is because information when integrated from different silos becomes more than the sum of its parts.

The Court, however, dismissed this argument, accepting UIDAI’s submission that the data collected remains in different silos and merging is not permitted within the Aadhaar framework. Therefore, the Court did not examine whether it is constitutionally permissible to integrate data from different silos; it simply rejected the possibility of surveillance as a result of Aadhaar authentication.

Jurisprudence in other jurisdictions is more advanced. In United States v. Jones, the United States Supreme Court had observed that the insertion of a global positioning system into Antoine Jones’ Jeep in the absence of a warrant and without his consent invaded his privacy, entitling him to Fourth Amendment Protection. In this case, the movement of Jones’ vehicle was monitored for a period of twenty-eight days. Five concurring opinions in Jones acknowledges that aggregated and extensive surveillance is capable of violating the reasonable expectation of privacy irrespective of whether or not surveillance has taken place in public.

The Court distinguished between prolonged surveillance and short term surveillance. Surveillance in the short run does not reveal what a person repeatedly does, as opposed to sustained surveillance which can reveal significantly more about a person. The Court takes the example of how a sequence of trips to a bar, a bookie, a gym or a church can tell a lot more about a person than the story of any single visit viewed in isolation.

Most recently, in Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court of the United States held that the collection of historical cell data by the government exposes the physical movements of an individual to potential surveillance, and an individual holds a reasonable expectation of privacy against such collection. The Court admitted that historical-cell site information allows the government to go back in time in order to retract the exact whereabouts of a person.

Judicial decisions have not addressed specifically whether facial recognition through law enforcement constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment or a “mere visual observation”.

The common thread linking CCTV footages and cellular data is the unique ability to track the movement of an individual from one place to another, enabling extreme forms of surveillance. It is perhaps this crucial link that would make ARFS-enabled CCTVs prejudicial to individual privacy.

The mosaic theory as understood in Carpenter helps one understand the extent to which an AFRS can augment the capacities of law enforcement in India. This in turn can help in understanding whether it is constitutionally permissible to install such systems across the country.

AFRS enabled-CCTV footages from different CCTVs. if viewed in conjunction could reveal a sequence of movements of an individual, enabling long-term surveillance of a nature that is qualitatively distinct from isolated observances observed across unrelated CCTV footages.

Subsequent to Carpenter, federal district courts in the United States have declined to apply Carpenter to video surveillance cases since the judgement did not “call into question conventional surveillance techniques and tools, such as security cameras.”

The extent of processing that an AFRS-enabled CCTV exposes an individual to would be significantly greater. This is because every time an individual is in the zone of a AFRS-enabled CCTV, the facial image will be compared to a common database. Snippets from different CCTVs capturing the individual’s physical presence in two different locations may not be meaningful per se. When observed together, the AFRS will make it possible to identify the individual’s movement from one place to another.

For instance, the AFRS will be able to identify the person when they are on Street A at a particular time and when they are Street B in the immediately subsequent hour recorded by respective CCTV cameras, indicating the person’s physical movement from A to B. While a CCTV camera only records movement of an individual in video format, AFRS translates that digital information into individualised data with the help of a comparison of facial features with a pre-existing database.

Through data aggregation, which appears to be the aim of the Indian government in their tender that links three databases, it is apparent that the right to privacy is in danger. Yet, at present, there does not exist any case law or legislation that can render such efforts illegal at this juncture.

Conclusions and The Way Forward

Despite a lack of judicial recognition of the potential unconstitutionality of deploying AFRS, it is clear that the introduction of these systems pose a clear and present danger to civil rights and human dignity. Algorithmic surveillance alters a human being’s life in ways that even the subject of this surveillance cannot fully comprehend. As an individual’s data is manipulated and aggregated to derive a pattern about that individual’s world, the individual or his data no longer exists for itselfbut are massaged into various categories.

Louis Amoore terms this a ‘data-derivative’, which is an abstract conglomeration of data that continuously shapes our futures without us having a say in their framing. The branding of an individual as a criminal and then aggregating their data causes emotional distress as individuals move about in fear of the state gaze and their association with activities that are branded as potentially dangerous — thereby suppressing a right to dissent — as exemplified by their use reported use during the recent protests in Hong Kong.

Case law both in India and abroad has clearly suggested that a right to privacy is contextual and is not surrendered merely because an individual is in a public place. However, the jurisprudence protecting public photography or videography under the umbrella of privacy remains less clear globally and non-existent in India.

The mosaic theory of privacy is useful in this regard as it prevents mass ‘data-veillance’ of individual behaviour and accurately identifies the unique power that the volume, velocity and variety of Big Data provides to the state. Therefore, it is imperative that the judiciary recognise safeguards from data aggregation as an essential component of a reasonable expectation of privacy. At the same time, legislation could also provide the required safeguards.

In the US, Senators Coons and Lee recently introduced a draft Bill titled ‘The Facial Recognition Technology Warrant Act of 2019’. The Bill aims to impose reasonable restrictions on the use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement. The Bill creates safeguards against sustained tracking of physical movements of an individual in public spaces. The Bill terms such tracking ‘ongoing surveillance’ when it occurs for over a period of 72 hours in real time or through application of technology to historical records. The Bill requires that ongoing surveillance only be conducted for law enforcement purposes and in pursuance of a Court Order (unless it is impractical to do so).

While the Bill has its textual problems, it is definitely worth considering as a model going forward and ensure that AFR systems are deployed in line with a rights-respecting reading of a reasonable expectation of privacy. Parsheera suggests that the legislation should narrow tailoring of the objects and purposes for deployment of AFRS, restrictions on the person whose images may be scanned from the databases, judicial approval for its use on a case by case basis and effective mechanisms of oversight, analysis and verification.

Appropriate legal intervention is crucial. A failure to implement this effectively jeopardizes the expression of our true selves and the core tenets of our democracy.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/automated-facial-recognition-systems-and-the-mosaic-theory-of-privacy-the-way-forward

Automated Facial Recognition Systems (AFRS): Responding to Related Privacy Concerns

Arindrajit Basu, Siddharth Sonkar — 2020-01-02T14:09:14Z

Arindrajit Basu and Siddharth Sonkar have co-written this blog as the second of their three-part blog series on AI Policy Exchange under the parent title: Is there a Reasonable Expectation of Privacy from Data Aggregation by Automated Facial Recognition Systems?

The Supreme Court of India, in Puttaswamy I recognized that the right to privacy is not surrendered merely because the individual is in a public place. Privacy is linked to the individual as it is an essential facet of human dignity. Justice Chelameswar further clarified that privacy is contextual. Even in a public setting, people trying to converse in whispers would signal a claim to the right to privacy. Speaking on a loudspeaker would naturally not signal the same claim.

The Supreme Court of Canada has also affirmed the notion of contextual privacy. As recently as on 7 March, 2019, the Supreme Court of Canada in a landmark decision defined privacy rights in public areas implicitly applying Helena Nissenbaum’s theory of contextual integrity. Helena Nissenbaum explains that the extent to which the right to privacy is eroded in public spaces with the help of her theory of contextual integrity.

Nissenbaum suggests that labelling information as exclusively public or private fails to take into account the context which rationalises the desire of the individual to exercise her privacy in public. To explain this with an illustration, there exists a reasonable expectation of privacy in the restroom of a restaurant, even though it is in a public space.

In R v Jarvis (Jarvis), the Court overruled a Court of Appeal for Ontario decision to hold that people can have a reasonable expectation of privacy even in public spaces. In this case, Jarvis was charged with the offence of voyeurism for secretly recording his students. The primary issue that the Supreme Court of Canada was concerned with was whether the students filmed by Mr. Jarvis enjoyed a reasonable expectation of privacy at their school.

The Court in this case unanimously held that students did indeed have a reasonable expectation of privacy. The Court concluded nine contextual factors relevant in determining whether a person has a reasonable expectation to privacy would arise. The listed factors were:

“1. The location the person was in when he or she was observed or recorded,

2. The nature of the impugned conduct (whether it consisted of observation or recording),

3. Awareness of or consent to potential observation or recording,

4. The manner in which the observation or recording was done,

5. The subject matter or content of the observation or recording,

6. Any rules, regulations or policies that governed the observation or recording in question,

7. The relationship between the person who was observed or recorded and the person who did the observing or recording,

8. The purpose for which the observation or recording was done, and

9. The personal attributes of the person who was observed or recorded.” (paragraph 29 of the judgement).

The Court emphasized that the factors are not an exhaustive list, but rather were meant to be a guiding tool in determining whether a reasonable expectation of privacy existed in a given context. It is not necessary that each of these factors is present in a given situation to give rise to an expectation of privacy.

Compared to the above-mentioned factors in Jarvis, the Indian Supreme Court in Justice K.S Puttaswamy (Retd.) v. Union of India: Justice Sikri (Puttaswamy II) — the case which upheld the constitutionality of the Aadhaar project relied on the following factors to determine a reasonable expectation of privacy in a given context:

“(i) What is the context in which a privacy claim is set up?

(ii) Does the claim relate to private or family life, or a confidential relationship?

(iii) Is the claim a serious one or is it trivial?

(iv) Is the disclosure likely to result in any serious or significant injury and the nature and extent of disclosure?

(v) Is disclosure relates to personal and sensitive information of an identified person?

(vi) Does disclosure relate to information already disclosed publicly? If so, its implication?”

These factors (acknowledged in Puttaswamy II in paragraph 292) seem to be very similar to the ones laid down in Jarvis, i.e., there is a strong reliance on the context in both cases. While there is no explicit mention of individual attributes of the individual claiming a reasonable expectation, the holding that children should be given an opt out indicates that the Court implicitly takes into account personal attributes (e.g. age) as well.

The Court in Jarvis further (in paragraph 39) took the example of a woman in a communal change room at a public pool. She may expect other users to incidentally observe her undress but she would continue to expect only other women in the change room to observe her and reserve her rights against the general public. She would also expect not to be video recorded or photographed while undressing, both from other users of the pool and by the general public.

If it is later found out that the change room had a one-way glass which allowed the pool staff to view the users change — or if there was a concealed camera recording persons while they were changing, she could claim a breach of her reasonable expectation of privacy under such circumstances and it would constitute an invasion of privacy.

So, in the context of an AFRS, an individual walking down a public road may still signal that they wish to avail of their right to privacy. In such contexts, a concerted surveillance mechanism may come up against constitutional roadblocks.

What is the nature of information being collected?

The second big question — the nature of information which is being collected plays a role in determining the extent to which a person can exercise their reasonable expectation of privacy. Puttaswamy II laid down that collection of core biometric information such as fingerprints, iris scans in the context of the Aadhaar-Based Biometric Authentication (‘ABBA’) is constitutionally permissible. The basis of this conclusion is that the Aadhaar Act does not deal with the individual’s intimate or private sphere.

The judgement of the Supreme Court in Puttaswamy II is in a very specific context (i.e. the ABBA). It does not explain or identify the contextual factors which determine the extent to which privacy may be reasonably expected over biometrics generally. In this judgment, the Court observed that demographic information and photographs do not raise a reasonable expectation of privacy under Article 21 unless there exist special circumstances such as the disclosure of juveniles in conflict of law or a rape victim’s identity.

Most importantly, the Court held that face photographs for the purpose of identification are not covered by a reasonable expectation of privacy. The Court distinguished face photographs from intimate photographs or those photographs which concern confidential situations.

Face photographs, according to the Court, are shared by individuals in the ordinary course of conduct for the purpose of obtaining a driving license, voter id, passport, examination admit cards, employment cards, and so on. Face photographs by themselves reveal no information.

Naturally, this pronouncement of the Apex Court is a huge boost for the introduction of AFRS in India.

Abroad, however, on 4 September 2019, in Edward Bridges v. Chief Constable of South Wales Police, a Division Bench of the High Court in England and Wales heard a challenge against an AFRS introduced by law enforcement (see Endnote 1). The High Court rejected a claim for judicial review holding that the AFRS in question does not violate inter alia the right to privacy under Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights (‘ECHR’).

According to the Court, the AFRS was used for specific and limited purposes, i.e., only when the image of the public matched a person on an existing watchlist. The use of the AFRS was therefore considered a lawful and fair restriction.

The Court, however, acknowledged that extracting biometric data through AFRS is “well beyond the expected and unsurprising”. This seems to be a departure from the Indian Supreme Court’s observation in Puttaswamy II that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy over biometric data in the context of ABBA, and may be a wiser approach for the Indian courts to adopt.

Endnote

1. The challenge was put forth by Edward Bridges, a civil liberties campaigner from Cardiff for being caught on camera in two particular deployments of the AFRS a) when he was at Queen Street, a busy shopping area in Cardiff and b) when he was at the Defence Procurement, Research, Technology and Exportability Exhibition held at the Motorpoint Arena.

This was published by AI Policy Exchange.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/automated-facial-recognition-systems-afrs-responding-to-related-privacy-concerns

August 2019 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2019-12-06T04:54:20Z

Centre for Internet & Society newsletter for the month of August 2019.

Highlights for August 2019
The Oxford Internet Institute and CIS are creating a State of the Internet’s Languages report, as baseline research with both numbers and stories, to demonstrate how far we are from making the internet multilingual. The call is available in Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, English, IsiZulu, Spanish, and Tamil. CIS invites friends and communities to translate the call into other languages. CIS's Access to Knowledge (A2K) team is conducting a free knowledge movement and as part of this initiative it is inviting contributions from the Wikipedia community. Photos, media, content or archives donated by community members would be used worldwide to disseminate information. The content you are donating must be under Creative Commons Share-like content. You must have the copyright of the content under CC licenses. Over the last few years, several digital identity schemes have been initiated in different countries across the world. There has been significant momentum on digital ID, especially after the adoption of UN Sustainable Development Goal 16.9, which calls for legal identity for all by 2030. Authors, Amber Sinha and Pooja Saxena, explore about the uses and design of digital identity systems and ask two core questions a) What are appropriate uses of ID?, and b) How should we think about the technological design of ID? Together with the Institute of Technology & Society (ITS), Brazil, and the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law(CIPIT), Kenya, CIS participated at a side event in RightsCon 2019 held in Tunisia, titled Holding ID Issuers Accountable, What Works?, organised by the Omidyar Network. A report of the event is published here. As governments across the globe implement new, foundational, digital identification systems (“Digital ID”), or modernize existing ID programs, there is dire need for greater research and discussion about appropriate uses of Digital ID systems. At RightsCon 2019 in Tunis, we presented working drafts on appropriate use of Digital ID by the partner organisations of this three-region research alliance - ITS from Brazil, CIPIT from Kenya, and CIS from India. CIS gave its comments to the ID4D Practitioners’ Guide: Draft For Consultation released by ID4D in June, 2019. The submission is divided into three main parts. The first part (General Comments) contains the high-level comments on the Practitioners’ Guide, while the second part (Specific Comments) addresses individual sections in the Guide. The third and final part (Additional Comments) does not relate to particulars in the Practitioners' Guide but other documents that it relies upon. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare had released the National Digital Health Blueprint on 15 July 2019 for comments. CIS submitted its comments. CIS notes that the nature of data which would be subject to processing in the proposed digital framework pre-supposes a robust data protection regime in India, one which is currently absent. Accordingly, it urges the ministry to cease the implementation of the framework until the Personal Data Protection Bill is passed by the Parliament. Aayush Rathi , Vedika Pareek , Divij Joshi and Pranav Bidare co-authored a research paper 'Future of Work in the ASEAN'. The authors reveal that the future of work will be mediated through region and country specific factors such as socioeconomic,geopolitical and demographic change. The report was edited by Elonnai Hickok and Ambika Tandon with research assistance by Sankalp Srivastava and Anjanaa Aravindan. The research is supported by Tides Foundation.

CIS and the News

The following articles were authored by CIS secretariat during the month:

The Knowledge Base is Liberated (Subodh Kulkarni and Madhav Gadgil; Loksatta; August 3, 2019).
Private Sector and the cultivation of cyber norms in India (Arindrajit Basu; Nextrends India; August 5, 2019).
Rethinking the intermediary liability regime in India (Torsha Sarkar; CyberBRICS; August 16, 2019).
Digital Native: How free is the internet? (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; August 18, 2019).
Linking Aadhaar with social media or ending encryption is counterproductive (Sunil Abraham; Prime Time; August 26, 2019).
A judicial overreach into matters of regulation (Gurshabad Grover; The Hindu; August 28, 2019).
Kashmir’s information vacuum (Aayush Rathi and Akriti Bopanna; The Hindu; August 29, 2019).

CIS in the News

CIS secretariat was consulted for the following articles published during the month in various publications:

Will Modi govt move on Kashmir’s Article 370 stand the scrutiny of Supreme Court? (The Print; August 6, 2019).
‘I’m just helpless’: Concern about Kashmir mounts as communication blackout continues (Niha Masih; Washington Post; August 6, 2019).
Why the Madras HC case on WhatsApp traceability could have wider ramifications (Haripriya Suresh; The News Minute; August 8, 2019).
Ministry of Health's public consultation on National Digital Health Blueprint: Legal issues around telemedicine, consent, and 'egosystems' in healthcare (Trisha Jalan; Medianama; August 8, 2019).
Abuse linked to Net fixation (Nina C. George; Deccan Herald; August 13, 2019).
India Shut Down Kashmir’s Internet Access. Now, ‘We Cannot Do Anything.’ (Vindu Goel, Karan Deep Singh and Sameer; New York Times; August 14, 2019).
India’s top science institution is trying hard to fix its “manel” problem (Quartz India; August 16, 2019). This piece was originally published on Connect under the headline, “We Learned (The Hard Way) Not to Have Manels.”
Perché l'India ha tagliato internet al Kashmir (Raffaele Angius; WIRED.IT; August 19, 2019).
US pressure threatens to weaken data - localisation mandate in India's landmark data-protection bill (Sandhya Sharma; ET Prime; August 19, 2019).
Linking Aadhaar to Facebook, WhatsApp won't curb fake news, but may undermine its legislation: Experts (Swathy Moorthy; Moneycontrol; August 20, 2019).
Linking Aadhaar to Facebook, Twitter: Possible witch-hunt or key to curb crime & fake news? (Taran Deol and Revathi Krishanan; The Print; August 21, 2019).
AI is biased, you’ll see if you Google ‘hands’ (Rajmohan Sudhakar; Deccan Herald; August 25, 2019).
Government plans tighter rules for social media brands like Facebook, TikTok, ShareChat (Sunny Sen; CNBC TV 18; August 28, 2019).
What Centre will tell Supreme Court on Aadhaar and social media account linkage (Amrita Madhukalya; Hindustan Times; August 28, 2019).

Access to Knowledge

Access to Knowledge is a campaign to promote the fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and economic development. It deals with issues like copyrights, patents and trademarks, which are an important part of the digital landscape.

Wikipedia

Under a grant from Wikimedia Foundation we are doing a project for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

Blog Entry

Call for joining the Free Knowledge movement #Wikipedia #Wikimedia (Bhuvana Meenakshi; August 19, 2019).

Internet Governance

The Tunis Agenda of the second World Summit on the Information Society has defined internet governance as the development and application by governments, the private sector and civil society, in their respective roles of shared principles, norms, rules, decision making procedures and programmes that shape the evolution and use of the Internet. As part of internet governance work we work on policy issues relating to freedom of expression primarily focusing on the Information Technology Act and issues of liability of intermediaries for unlawful speech and simultaneously ensuring that the right to privacy is safeguarded as well.

Freedom of Speech & Expression

Under a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, CIS is doing research on the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government and contribute studies, reports and policy briefs to feed into the ongoing debates at the national as well as international level. As part of the project we bring you the following outputs:

Participation in Events

Packets, net neutrality and gaming public policy outcomes (Organized by Has Geek; Bangalore; August 15, 2019). Gurshabad Grover attended Prof. Vishal Misra's lecture on net neutrality.

Privacy

Under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC we are doing a project on surveillance. CIS is researching the history of privacy in India and how it shapes the contemporary debates around technology mediated identity projects like Aadhar. As part of our ongoing research, we bring you the following outputs:

Submission

Comments on the National Digital Health Blueprint (Samyukta Prabhu, Ambika Tandon, Torsha Sarkar and Aayush Rathi; August 7, 2019).

Participation in Events

Digital ID Forum 2019 (Organized by UNDP; Chulalongkorn University, Thailand; July 3, 2019). Sunil Abraham was one of the panelists at this event.
BIS LITD 17 meeting (Organized by Bureau of Indian Standards; New Delhi; July 3, 2019). Gurshabad Grover attended the sixteenth meeting of the Information Systems Security and Biometrics Section Committee (LITD17).
Facebook Data for Good in Bangalore (Organized by Facebook; Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; July 25, 2019).
Roundtable with the WhatsApp leadership (Organized by WhatsApp; Mountbatten, The Oberoi, New Delhi; July 26, 2019). Will Cathcart, WhatsApp's new global head, visited India and invited Sunil Abraham for a discussion.
Facebook Data for Good in New Delhi (Organized by Facebook; University of Chicago Center, New Delhi; July 29, 2019).

IT / Information Technology

A research on the usage of systems (computers and telecommunications) for storing, retrieving and sending information as well as the IT Act:

Research Paper

Future of Work in the ASEAN (Aayush Rathi , Vedika Pareek , Divij Joshi and Pranav Bidare; edited by Elonnai Hickok and Ambika Tandon with research assistance from Sankalp Srivastava and Anjanaa Aravindan; August 31, 2019).

Participation in Event

Cyber Policy 2.0 (Organized by National Law University; Bangalore; August 17, 2019). Arindrajit Basu was a speaker.

Artificial Intelligence

With origins dating back to the 1950s Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not necessarily new. However, interest in AI has been rekindled over the recent years due to advancements of technology and its applications to real-world scenarios. We conduct research on the existing legal and regulatory parameters:

Participation in Events

Emergence of Chinese Technology:Rising stakes for innovation, competition and governance (Organized by Omidyar Network in partnership with the Esya Centre; New Delhi; August 12, 2019). Arindrajit Basu attended the event.
Impact of Industrial Revolution 4.0 - IT and Automotive Sector in India (Organized by the Dialogue and Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung; Bangalore; August 21, 2019). Aayush Rathi attended the event.
Policies for the Platform Economy (Organized by IT for Change; India Habitat Centre; New Delhi; August 30, 2019). Amber Sinha and Anubha Sinha were panelists.

Digital Identity

Omidyar Network is investing in establishment of a three-region research alliance — to be co-led by the Institute for Technology & Society (ITS), Brazil, the Centre for Intellectual Property and Information Technology Law (CIPIT) , Kenya, and CIS. As part of this Alliance, we at the CIS will look at the policy objectives of digital identity projects, how technological policy choices can be thought through to meet the objectives, and how legitimate uses of a digital identity framework may be evaluated.

Research Paper

Design and Uses of Digital Identities - Research Plan (Amber Sinha and Pooja Saxena; August 8, 2019).

Submissions

The Appropriate Use of Digital Identity (Amber Sinha; August 8, 2019).
Comments to the ID4D Practitioners’ Guide (Amber Sinha; August 8, 2019).

Participation in Event

Holding ID Issuers Accountable, What Works? (Organized by Omidyar Network; RightsCon 2019; August 8, 2019).

Researchers@Work

The researchers@work programme at CIS produces and supports pioneering and sustained trans-disciplinary research on key thematics at the intersections of internet and society; organise and incubate networks of and fora for researchers and practitioners studying and making internet in India; and contribute to development of critical digital pedagogy, research methodology, and creative practice.

Participation in Event

Workshop on Archival Standards and Digitisation Workflow (Organized by British Library; NCBS; Bangalore; August 19 - 20, 2019). P.P. Sneha attended the event.

Blog Entries

#HookingUp (Akhil Kang, Christina Thomas Dhanraj, Dhrubo Jyoti, and Gowthaman Ranganathan; August 1, 2019).
Call for Contributions and Reflections: Your experiences in Decolonizing the Internet’s Languages! (P.P. Sneha; August 7, 2019).
Simiran Lalvani - Workers’ fictive kinship relations in Mumbai app-based food delivery (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; August 16, 2019).

About CIS

CIS is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

Follow CIS on:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

Support CIS:

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

Collaborate with CIS:

We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro@cis-india.org (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, at tanveer@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/august-2019-newsletter

August 2018 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2018-09-16T05:08:39Z

CIS newsletter for the month of August 2018.

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights

India houses the second largest population in the world at approximately 1.35 billion individuals. In such a diverse and dense context, law enforcement could be a challenging job. Elonnai Hickok and Vipul Kharbanda throw light on the CLOUD Act and its implifications for India in a blog post.
On August 9, 2018, the DNA Technology (Use and Application) Regulation Bill, 2018 was introduced in the Lok Sabha. CIS had commented on some key aspects of the bill in many forums earlier. Elonnai Hickok and Murali Neelakantan in an article published by Bloomberg Quint have voiced their opinion on the bill.
Murali Neelakantan, Swaraj Barooah, Swagam Dasgupta and Torsha Sarkar in an Op-ed in Bloomberg Quint have examined the National Health Stack, an ambitious attempt by the government to to build a digital infrastructure with a “deep understanding of the incentive structures prevalent in the Indian healthcare ecosystem. The authors have argued that collection of health data, without sensitisation and accountability, has the potential to deny healthcare to the vulnerable.
An article titled India's Contribution to Internet Governance Debates, co-authored by Sunil Abraham, Mukta Batra, Geetha Hariharan, Swaraj Barooah and Akriti Bopanna, was published in the NLUD Student Law Journal, an annual peer-reviewed journal published by the National Law University, Delhi.
IT/IT-eS Sector and the Future of Work in India was organized at Omidyar Networks’ office in Bangalore, on June 29, 2018. Torsha Sarkar, Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rath co-authored a report.
Swaraj Barooah and Gurshabad Grover co-authored an article in Livemint that examines a few problematic provisions in the proposed Anti-trafficking Bill. The authors say that it may lead to censorship.
The Researchers at Work programme of CIS had invited abstracts for essays that explore dimensions of offline lives. Selected authors are expected to submit the first draft of the essay (2000-4000 words) by Friday, October 5, 2018.

Articles

Anti-trafficking Bill may lead to censorship (Swaraj Barooah and Gurshabad Grover; Livemint; July 24, 2018). The article was mirrored on CIS website in the month of August 2018.
The National Health Stack: An Expensive, Temporary Placebo (Murali Neelakantan, Swaraj Barooah, Swagam Dasgupta, and Torsha Sarkar; Bloomberg Quint; August 6, 2018).
Digital Native: Double Speak (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; August 12, 2018).
India's Contribution to Internet Governance Debates (Sunil Abraham, Mukta Batra, Geetha Hariharan, Swaraj Barooah and Akriti Bopanna; NLUD Student Law Journal; August 16, 2018).
National Health Stack: Data for Data's Sake, A Manmade Health Hazard (Murali Neelakantan, Swaraj Barooah, Swagam Dasgupta and Torsha Sarkar; Bloomberg Quint; August 17, 2018).
DNA ‘Evidence’: Only Opinion, Not Science, And Definitely Not Proof Of Crime! (Elonnai Hickok and Murali Neelakantan; Bloomberg Quint; August 22, 2018).
Digital Native: Playing God (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; August 26, 2018).

CIS in the News

UNDP joins Tech Giants in Partnership on AI (UNDP; August 1, 2018). CIS is one of the partners.
UIDAI says asked nobody to add the helpline number to contacts (Komal Gupta; Livemint; August 3, 2018).
How Chinese apps are making inroads in Indian small towns (Mugdha Variyar; Economic Times; August 10, 2018).
The Big Eye: The tech is all ready for mass surveillance in India (Anand Murali; Factor Daily; August 13, 2018).
Centre draws red lines for Whatsapp over fake news, says must comply with Indian laws (Nakul Sridhar; Hindustan Times; August 21, 2018).
India steps up vigilance against WhatsApp abuse (Debashree Dasgupta; Straits Times; August 24, 2018).
India’s Biometric Database Is Creating A Perfect Surveillance State — And U.S. Tech Companies Are On Board (Paul Bluementhal and Gopal Sathe; Huffington Post; August 25, 2018).
20 years of Google: Privacy, fake news and the future (Rachel Lopez; Hindustan Times; August 26, 2018).

Access to Knowledge

Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

Wikipedia

Blog Entry

మిసిమి పత్రిక గ్రంథాలయంలో తెలుగు వికీపీడియన్ల కార్యక్రమం (Pavan Santhosh; August 22, 2018).

Events Organized

వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/గుంటూరు/అన్నమయ్య గ్రంథాలయం - భాగస్వామ్య కార్యక్రమం జూలై 2018 (Organized by CIS-A2K; Annamaya Library; Guntur; July 10, 2018).
Workshop of Publishers and Writers on Unicode, Open Source and Wikimedia Projects (Organized by CIS-A2K; Pune; July 25, 2018).
Workshop of River activists for building Jal Bodh - Knowledge resource on Water (Organized by CIS-A2K; Pune; July 25, 2018).
ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯ:ಸಂಪಾದನೋತ್ಸವಗಳು/ಸಂಪಾದನೋತ್ಸವ ತುಮಕೂರು ವಿಶ್ವವಿದ್ಯಾನಿಲಯ ೨೦೧೮ (Organized by CIS-A2K; Tumakur University; July 25, 2018).
Intensive Personalised Wiki Training Session at Pune (Organized by CIS-A2K; August 2018).
Wikisource and Wiki technical session at MKCL (Organized by CIS-A2K; Pune; August 2018).
Wiki technical orientation session with PyLadies group (Organized by CIS-A2K; Cummins College of Engineering, Pune; August 7, 2018).
Indian Independence Struggle Edit-a-thon on Marathi Wikipedia (Organized by CIS-A2K; August 10 - 20, 2018).

Event Participation

వికీపీడియా:సమావేశం/హైదరాబాదు/మిసిమి పత్రిక భాగస్వామ్య సమావేశం, జూలై 2018 (July 24, 2018). CIS-A2K held partnership discussions with Misimi Telugu monthly magazine.

Note: Event reports for all these were published in the month of August 2018.

Internet Governance

As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on restrictions that the Indian government has placed on freedom of expression online.

Privacy

Blog Entries

Use of Visuals and Nudges in Privacy Notices (Saumyaa Naidu; edited by Elonnai Hickok and Amber Sinha; August 18, 2018).
An Analysis of the CLOUD Act and Implications for India (Elonnai Hickok and Vipul Kharbanda; August 22, 2018).
Consumer Care Society: Silver Jubilee Year Celebrations (Arindrajit Basu; August 27, 2018).

Event Participation

Celebrating One Year of the Justice K.S. Puttaswamy v. Union of India Judgment (Organized by Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations and Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University - Delhi; India International Centre; New Delhi; August 24, 2018). Shweta Mohandas was a panelist at the event.

Free Speech & Expression

Blog Entry

ICANN response to DIDP #31 on diversity (Akriti Bopanna and Akash Sriram; August 21, 2018).

Event Participation

Feminist Information Infrastructure Workshop with Blank Noise and Sangama (Organized by Sangama and Blank Noise; CIS, Bangalore; August 8, 2018). Akriti Bopanna, Swaraj Paul Barooah and Ambika Tandon conducted the workshop.
Summer School on Disinformation (Organized by Digital Asia Hub, Hans-Bredow-Institut, University of Hamburg, Institute for Technology & Society of Rio de Janeiro - ITS Rio and Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University; Azure Room, Pullman, Jakarta; August 22 - 24, 2018). Sunil Abraham made a presentation on Disinformation and Online Recruitment.
World Library and Information Congress 2018 (Organized by International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions; Kuala Lumpur; August 26 - 27, 2018). Swaraj Paul Barooah was a speaker at two panels. Swaraj's first panel, titled "Intellectual Freedom in a Polarised World" was selected as one of 9 sessions to be live-streamed and recorded, out of 249 sessions in total. The recording can be accessed on YouTube.

Information Technology

Blog Entry

Future of Work: Report of the ‘Workshop on the IT/IT-eS Sector and the Future of Work in India’ (Torsha Sarkar, Ambika Tandon and Aayush Rath; edited by Elonnai Hickok. Akash Sriram and Divya Kushwaha; August 16, 2018).

Researchers at Work

The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by an emerging need to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It aims to produce local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

Call for Essays: Offline (P.P. Sneha; August 6, 2018). Selected authors are expected to submit the first draft of the essay (2000-4000 words) by Friday, October 5, 2018.

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

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August 2017 Newsletter

Admin — 2017-10-09T14:48:24Z

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
Elonnai Hickok wrote a blog post which provided a high level comparison of the 2017 and 2015 DNA Profiling Bill - calling out positive changes, remaining issues, and missing provisions. Rohini Lakshane wrote a blog post on dataset for patent requirements and complex products. The dataset has been released under the Creative Commons-Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License. A Marathi Wikipedia workshop was held in Sangli, Maharashtra. Subodh Kulkarni shared the developments in a blog post. In an emphatic endorsement of the right to privacy, a nine judge constitutional bench unanimously upheld a fundamental right to privacy. The events leading to this bench began during the hearings in the ongoing Aadhaar case, when in August 2015, Mukul Rohatgi, the then Attorney General stated that there is no constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy. CIS gave its statement on right to privacy judgment.

CIS in the news:

Privacy laws: Alternatives to consent (Livemint; August 1, 2017).
The rise of India’s typography community (Susanna Myrtle Lazarus; Hindu, August 4, 2017).
UNESCO Internet Universality Indicators consulted at the 8th Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (UNESCO, August 9, 2017).
Aadhaar may be made must for market investments: Good to curb laundering but what about data security? (Bindisha Sarang; August 10, 2017).
Privacy is now a right in India. Here's what that means for the tech industry (Rishi Iyengar, CNN Tech, August 29, 2017).

CIS members wrote the following articles

Aadhar: Privacy is not a unidimensional concept (Amber Sinha; Economic Times; July 23, 2017).
A New Telecom Policy that Works (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; August 2, 2017).
Should an Inability to Precisely Define Privacy Render It Untenable as a Right? (Amber Sinha; The Wire; August 2, 2017).
Here’s why we need a lot more discussion on India’s new DNA Profiling Bill (Elonnai Hickok; August 21, 2017).
Infographic: The Impending Right to Privacy Judgment (Amber Sinha and Pooja Saxena; The Wire; August 22, 2017).
Digital native: You are not alone (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; August 27, 2017).

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Access to Knowledge
-----------------------------------
Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

►Pervasive Technologies

Dataset for "Patent Working Requirements and Complex Products: An Empirical Assessment of India's Form 27 Practice and Compliance" (Rohini Lakshané; August 17, 2017).

►Wikipedia

As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Blog Entries

Marathi Wikipedia Workshop in Sangli, Maharashtra (Subodh Kulkarni; August 1, 2017).
Wikipedia Workshop on Template Creation and Modification Conducted in Bengaluru (Tito Dutta; August 10, 2017).
Telugu Wikisource Workshop (Pavan Santhosh; August 15, 2017).

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Internet Governance
-----------------------------------

►Privacy

Blog Entries

High Level Comparison and Analysis of the Use and Regulation of DNA Based Technology Bill 2017 (Elonnai Hickok; August 4, 2017).

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Telecom
-----------------------------------
CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources, and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Newspaper Column

A New Telecom Policy That Works (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; August 2, 2017).

-----------------------------------

About CIS
-----------------------------------
The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

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E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
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► Request for Collaboration

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/august-2017-newsletter

August 2015 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2015-10-27T00:25:02Z

We are happy to share with you the eighth issue of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) newsletter (August 2015). The past editions of the newsletter can be accessed at http://cis-india.org/about/newsletters.

Highlights

Researchers at Work programme has published a book titled Digital Activism in Asia Reader exploring in detail digital activism in Asia. The Reader was edited by Nishant Shah, P.P. Sneha, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay with support from Anirudh Sridhar, Denisse Albornoz, and Verena Getahun. The pre-publication drafts of two sections written by Sumandro Chattapadhyay for the third volume (2000-2010) of the Asia Internet History series edited by Prof. Kilnam Chon have been posted for open-review process. As part of the 'Studying Internets in India' series, RAW published blog entries on Governing Speech on the Internet and Mock-Calling - Ironies of Outsourcing and the Aspirations of an Individual. NVDA team conducted a workshop at Jeevan Jyoti School for the Blind, Varanasi from August 26 to 28, 2015. Eighty five students and 13 teachers took part in the training programme. NVDA team had conducted another workshop earlier in Nashik. The workshop was conducted in June. A batch of 17 Special Educators and teachers of the blind attended the workshop. Maggie Huang, Arpita Sengupta and Paavni Anand as part of the Pervasive Technologies project co-authored a research paper that seeks to compare the publicly available information on the websites of music collective management organizations ("CMOs") operating within India, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Amulya Purushothama, Nehaa Chaudhari and Varun Baliga in a blog entry have delved into the question of what the mandate of the Sectoral Innovation Council is, what its activities are, and what vision for IPR development in India has it put forth. An RTI Application has been filed by CIS to attain information on these issues. In a blog post, Amulya Purushothama announced our new MHRD IPR Chair Series and has charted the sequence of events, starting from the establishment of MHRD IPR Chairs, to discussions surrounding their purpose and functioning, to concerns surrounding the lack of information about the IPR Chairs, the first round of RTIs that CIS had filed in regard to this and the responses it solicited. Subhashish Panigrahi interviewed Prateek Pattanaik. Prateek has not just digitized as many as 54 Odia-language poetry dating early 18th century but has also annotated, both poetic and prosaic translation in his blogs "Sri Jagannatha" and "Utkal Sangeet". He has also published a complete book "Kisora chandranana champu" on Odia Wikisource. A recent entrant into the Odia Wikimedia community, Prateek is also the youngest Odia Wikimedian. Rohan George and Elonnai Hickok in a blog post analyzed consent, big data and data protection that examines in detail why the principle of consent is providing us increasingly less of an aegis in protecting our data. Elonnai Hickok, Vipul Kharbanda and Vanya Rakesh on behalf of CIS submitted a clause-by-clause comments on the Human DNA Profiling Bill that was circulated by the Department of Biotechnology on June 9, 2015. Sunil Abraham, Elonnai Hickok and Tarun Krishnakumar co-authored an article titled Security: Privacy, Transparency and Technology. The article was published by Observer Research Foundation, Digital Debates 2015: CyFy Journal Volume 2. Elonnai Hickok in a blog post titled A Review of the Policy Debate around Big Data and Internet of Things has done an analysis as to how regulators and experts across jurisdictions are reacting to Big Data and Internet of Things. The Supreme Court of India has deemed it fit to refer the question of the very existence of a fundamental right to privacy to a Constitution Bench to finally decide the matter, and define the contours of such right if it does exist. Vipul Kharbanda analyses this in a blog entry. Experts and regulators across jurisdictions are examining the impact of Big Data practices on traditional data protection standards and principles. This will be a useful and pertinent exercise for India to undertake as the government and the private and public sectors begin to incorporate and rely on the use of Big Data in decision making processes and organizational operations. Elonnai Hickok has provided an initial evaluation of how Big Data could impact India's current data protection standards. Elonnai Hickok has provided a comparison of Human DNA Profiling Bill 2012 vs. the Human DNA Profiling Bill 2015, CIS's main recommendations vs. the 2015 Bill, Sub-Committee Recommendations vs. the 2015 Bill, and the Expert Committee Recommendations vs. the 2015 Bill. CIS submitted its comments to the non-paper on the UNGA Overall Review of the Implementation of the WSIS outcomes, evaluating the progress made and challenges ahead. In a policy brief, Vipul Kharbanda has analyzed the different laws regulating surveillance at the state and central level in India and calls out ways in which the provisions are unharmonized. The brief then provides recommendations for the harmonization of surveillance law in India. Hardnews interviewed Sunil Abraham about the future of the internet in India. The article was published in their August edition. Shyam Ponappa in an Op-ed published by Business Standard has given an analysis on the reasons of the number of dropped calls on our mobile phones.

Accessibility and Inclusion

Under a grant from the Hans Foundation we are doing a project on developing text-to-speech software for 15 Indian languages. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here. The project on creating a national resource kit of state-wise laws, policies and programmes on issues relating to persons with disabilities in India got over and the compilation has been printed.

NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Updates

August 2015 Report (Suman Dogra; July 31, 2015).

Event Reports

Training in eSpeak Marathi (Organized by NVDA team; National Association for the Blind; Nashik; June 22 - 23, 2015). The workshop was held in the month of June but the report got published later in August.
Training in eSpeak Hindi (Organized by NVDA team; Jeevan Jyoti School for the Blind; Varanasi; August 26 - 28, 2015).

Access to Knowledge

As part of the Access to Knowledge programme we are doing two projects. The first one (Pervasive Technologies) under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is for research on the complex interplay between pervasive technologies and intellectual property to support intellectual property norms that encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The second one (Wikipedia) under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

Pervasive Technologies

Blog Entries

Methodology: Patent Landscaping in the Indian Mobile Device Market (Rohini Lakshané; November 10, 2014). This blog post published last year has been recently updated.
Comparative Transparency Review of Collective Management Organisations in India, United Kingdom and the United States (Maggie Huang, Arpita Sengupta and Paavni Anand; August 1, 2015).

Other (Copyright and Patent)

Blog Entries

CCI Participation at the Upcoming 3rd International Conference on IPR and Competition (Amulya Purushothama; August 5, 2015). CIS wrote to the Competition Commission of India Chairman on August 5, 2015 about participation at a conference organised by Ericsson and concerns regarding conflict of interest. We also had several other NGOs sign on to the letter.
MHRD IPR Chair Series: Introduction (Amulya Purushothama; August 10, 2015). Aditya Garg assisted in research and writing.
National IPR Policy Series: What Have the Sectoral Innovation Councils Been Doing on IPR (Nehaa Chaudhari and Varun Baliga; August 13, 2015). Amulya Purushothama assisted with research and writing.

Media Coverage

Competition Commission of India chariman's participation in Assocham conference raises conflict of interests (Rema Nagarajan; The Times of India; August 6, 2015).
Assocham event sparks row over conflict of interest by CCI (Dilasha Seth and Deepak Patel; Business Standard; August 6, 2015).

Wikipedia

Blog Entry

Odia Wikisource has a new Wikisourcer, and he is the youngest in the Odia Wikimedia community! (Subhashish Panigrahi; August 21, 2015).

Events Co-organized

Annamaya Library edit-a-thon (Organized by CIS-A2K and Telugu Wikipedia Community; August 6, 2015; Andhra Loyola College; Vijaywada).
International Workshop on Digitization and Archiving (Organized by CIS-A2K and Wikipedia Community; August 19 - 21, 2015). Rahmanuddin Shaik was one of the trainers.

FOSS

Participation in Events

Workshop on digital collaborations in Tamil-language, Tamil Virtual Chennai (Organized by Tamil Virtual University, Anna University Campus, Chennai; August 8 - 9, 2015). Dr. U.B. Pavanaja atttended this event.
Open Innovation, entrepreneurship, and our digital future (Organized by iSpirit; Bangalore; August 13, 2015). Rohini Lakshané attended the event. Rohini wrote a report on this .

Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following:

Telugu Wikipedia Edit-a-thon at ALC (Eenadu; August 6, 2015)
Telugu Wiki Edit-a-thon in ALC (Eenadu; August 6, 2015)
Rare Telugu religious and historical work preserved at Annamacharya library to come on Wikisource! (The Hans India; August 7, 2015).
ಗ್ರಾಮೀಣ ಪ್ರದೇಶದ ಆರ್ಥಿಕ ಪ್ರಗತಿಯಿಂದ ದೇಶದ ಆರ್ಥಿಕ ಪ್ರಗತಿ ಸಾಧ್ಯವಾಗುತ್ತದೆ. (Mangalorean.com; August 13, 2015).
ವಿಕಿಪಿಡಿಯ ಮುಕ್ತವಾಗಿ ಬಳಸಿ: ಡಾ.ಪವನಜ (Karavali Karnataka; August 14, 2015).
ಬೆಳ್ತಂಗಡಿ:ಎಲ್ಲಾ ಕಾಲಕ್ಕೂ ಲಭ್ಯ ಇರುವ ಸ್ವತಂತ್ರ ಹಾಗೂ ಮುಕ್ತ ವಿಶ್ವಕೋಶ ವಿಕಿಪೀಡಿಯಾ-ಪವನಜ (SahilOnline; August 14, 2015).
Talamaddale on August 23 (Hindu; August 16, 2015).

Internet Governance

As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and International Development Research Centre (IDRC)) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on studying the restrictions placed on freedom of expression online by the Indian government.

Privacy

Article

Security: Privacy, Transparency and Technology (Sunil Abraham, Elonnai Hickok and Tarun Krishnakumar; Observer Research Foundation, Digital Debates 2015: CyFy Journal Volume 2 ; August 19, 2015).

Submission

CIS Comments and Recommendations to the Human DNA Profiling Bill, June 2015 (Elonnai Hickok, Vipul Kharbanda and Vanya Rakesh; August 27, 2015).

Blog Entries

Policy Paper on Surveillance in India (Vipul Kharbanda; August 3, 2015).
Comparison of the Human DNA Profiling Bill 2012 with: CIS recommendations, Sub-Committee Recommendations, Expert Committee Recommendations, and the Human DNA Profiling Bill 2015 (Elonnai Hickok; August 10, 2015).
Right to Privacy in Peril (Vipul Kharbanda; August 13, 2015).
Responsible Data Forum: Discussion on the Risks and Mitigations of releasing Data (Vanya Rakesh; August 26, 2015).
Are we Throwing our Data Protection Regimes under the Bus? (Elonnai Hickok and Rohan George; August 29, 2015).
Supreme Court Order is a Good Start, but is Seeding Necessary? (Elonnai Hickok and Rohan George; August 29, 2015).

Big Data

Blog Entries

Big Data and the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules 2011 (Elonnai Hickok; August 11, 2015).
A Review of the Policy Debate around Big Data and Internet of Things (Elonnai Hickok; August 17, 2015).

Participation in Event

The Changing Landscape of ICT Governance and Practice - Convergence and Big Data (Co-organized by Innovation Center for Big Data and Digital Convergence, Yuan Ze University, Taiwan; August 24 - 25, 2015). Sharat Chandra Ram was granted the Young Scholar Award 2015 to attend theYoung Scholar Workshop followed by main CPRSouth2015 conference (Communication Policy Research South) conference.

Free Speech and Expression

Submission

CIS submission to the UNGA WSIS+10 Review (Jyoti Panday; August 9, 2015),

Cyber Security

Upcoming Event

Bangalore Chapter Meet of DSCI (Co-organized by DSCI and CIS; September 26, 2015). Melissa Hathaway, Commissioner, Global Commission for Internet Governance and Sunil Abraham will be speaking at this event.

Telecom

CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Op-ed

Those Dropped Calls (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; August 5, 2015 and Organizing India Blogspot; August 6, 2015).

Researchers at Work

The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by contemporary concerns to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It is interested in producing local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

Books

Digital Activism in Asia Reader (edited by Nishant Shah, P.P. Sneha, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay, with support from Anirudh Sridhar, Denisse Albornoz, and Verena Getahun; August 8, 2015).

Books Chapters

Civil Society Organisations and Internet Governance in Asia - Open Review (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; Asia Internet History Vol. 3, edited by Prof. Kilnam Chon). Comments are invited.
Civil Society Organisations and Internet Governance in India - Open Review (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; Asia Internet History Vol. 3, edited by Prof. Kilnam Chon). Comments are invited.

Accepted Paper Abstract

Studying the Emerging Database State in India: Notes for Critical Data Studies (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; August 2, 2015). The paper has been provisionally accepted.

Blog Entries

Mock-Calling - Ironies of Outsourcing and the Aspirations of an Individual (Sreedeep; August 6, 2015).
Governing Speech on the Internet: From the Free Marketplace Policy to a Controlled 'Public Sphere' (Smarika Kumar; August 28, 2015).

News & Media Coverage

CIS gave its inputs to the following media coverage:

Why the DNA Bill is open to misuse: Sunil Abraham (Kanika Datta; Business Standard; August 1, 2015)
Porn ban: People will soon learn to circumvent ISPs and govt orders, expert says (Karthikeyan Hemalatha; The Times of India; August 2, 2015).
Indian government orders ISPs to block 857 porn websites (John Ribeiro; IDG News and PC World; August 2, 2015)
India blocks access to 857 porn sites (BBC; August 3, 2015).
India launches crackdown on online porn (James Crabtree; Financial Times; August 3, 2015).
Proxies and VPNs: Why govt can't ban porn websites? (Siladitya Ray; August 3, 2015; Hindustan Times)
Nanny state rules porn bad for you (Anahita Mukherji; The Times of India; August 4, 2015).
Ban on pornography temporary, says government (Business Standard; August 4, 2015)
Porn block in India sparks outrage (Australian; August 5, 2015).
Indian Porn Ban is Partially Lifted But Sites Remain Blocked (Sean Mclain; Wall Street Journal; August 5, 2015)
Genetic Profiling: Is it all in the DNA? (Ullekh N.P.; The Open Magazine; August 7, 2015)
India partially lifts Porn Ban? (Nazhat Khan; DESI blitz; August 7, 2015)
Net Neutrality: India is a Key Battleground (Abeer Kapoor; Hardnews; August 10, 2015)
Stats from 2014 reveal horror of scrapped section 66A of IT Act (Aloke Tikku; Hindustan Times; August 20, 2015).
The seedy underbelly of revenge porn (Sandhya Soman; The Times of India; August 23, 2015).
The new tattler in town (P. Anima; Hindu Businessline; August 28, 2015).

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the mediation and reconfiguration of social and cultural processes and structures by the internet and digital media technologies.

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