We are anonymous, we are legion

An Interview with Dr. Ann Cavoukian, Information and Privacy Commissioner, Ontario, Canada

elonnai — 2011-12-03T01:26:04Z

Elonnai Hickok interviewed Dr. Ann Cavoukian, Information and Privacy Commissioner, Ontario, Canada. The full interview is reproduced below.

When Canada weighed a broad privacy legislation against sectoral legislation, was the decision close? What were the most decisive factors?

Canada’s legislative privacy regime consists of both broad and sectoral privacy legislation.

Broadly, the use of personal information in Canadian commercial activities is regulated by federal legislation under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), or by provincial legislation that is “substantially similar” to PIPEDA, or by provincial legislation that is “substantially similar” to PIPEDA.

Sectorally, a prime example is the protection of personal health information under Ontario's Personal Health Information Protection Act, 2004 (PHIPA).

Regarding the decisive factors surrounding Parliament's passing of a broad private sector privacy statute, you may know that oversight of PIPEDA falls within the jurisdiction of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC). Accordingly, you may wish to focus your contact with the OPC regarding your question. In addition, Industry Canada may have some helpful resources regarding the federal government’s decision to enact PIPEDA.
Do you see the different perceptions and cultural understandings of privacy as something to be addressed through legislation? If not, do you think it should be addressed at all? How?

In an era marked by the widespread use of new information technologies, globalization, and the international flow of personal information, the establishment of global privacy standards is required to effectively protect personal privacy. Fortunately, an international community of data protection commissioners is hard at work contributing to the establishment of a set of global privacy principles. At the annual International Data Protection Commissioners Conference in 2005, Dr. Ann Cavoukian, Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, chaired a Working Group of Data Protection Commissioners that led to the Creation of a Global Privacy Standard. Such a principled but flexible approach can also be seen, for example, in the landmark Privacy by Design (PbD) resolution adopted unanimously, in 2010, by the international Privacy Authorities and Regulators at the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners in Jerusalem.[1]

The resolution recognizes PbD as an “essential component of fundamental privacy protection” – an International Standard, and urges its adoption in regulations and legislation around the world. Governments that employ this internationally recognized standard will be able to both protect privacy and address local and national priorities.[2]
How does the Canadian model implement self-regulation of privacy standards? How is that balanced against legal enforcement of privacy legislation?

In Canada, as elsewhere, private sector privacy regulation recognizes the dual purposes of protecting the individual's right to privacy, on the one hand, and recognizing the commercial need for access to personal information, on the other.[3]

PIPEDA furthers these two purposes by tying a set of flexible, technology-neutral privacy principles to a statutory framework of rules governing the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information.

In particular, Part I of PIPEDA provides the overarching statutory framework, while Schedule I, which was borrowed from the Canadian Standards Association’s Model Code for the Protection of Personal Information, provides flexible, technology-neutral privacy principles. To accomplish the dual purposes that animate PIPEDA and its Schedule, Canada’s Federal Court of Appeal has directed that the interpretation and application of this regulatory framework should be guided by "flexibility, common sense and pragmatism."[4]

Such an approach allows organizations to address their own goals and priorities within a privacy protective framework. Moreover, by incorporating the flexible principles of PbD, organizations can "go beyond mere legal compliance with notice, choice, access, security and enforcement requirements." Instead, they can be empowered to design their own responsive approaches to risk management and privacy-related innovation, within the context of the relevant regulatory framework. This approach allows organizations to develop doubly-enabling, positive-sum solutions that are win/win in nature and appropriate given the size and nature of the organization, the personal information it manages, and the range of risks, opportunities, and solutions available.
Does Canada favor private forms of redress or agency/state enforcement to prevent and remedy privacy violations? In what circumstances is one more effective than the other?

Canadian privacy legislation includes both state enforcement and private forms of redress; neither is necessarily favoured.

For example, under PHIPA, the Attorney General may impose fines of up to $50,000 for individuals and $250,000 for corporations who are found to be in breach of PHIPA. Further, our office has broad powers of investigation and can directly order a custodian to comply with its obligations. An individual affected by a Commissioner’s final PHIPA order may commence a proceeding in the Ontario Superior Court for damages for actual harm suffered.

Another example is under PIPEDA where contravention can result in fines of up to $100,000 depending upon the type and severity of the matter. Further, the federal privacy Commissioner has powers to investigate and report findings with respect to privacy complaints. Following the release of the Commissioner’s report, a complainant may apply to the Federal Court to seek remedies that include damages and an order requiring an organization to correct its practices.

Generally, fines and other penalties imposed on individuals and corporations by the government are effective in deterring certain actions and protecting the public from a variety of harmful practices. On the other hand, a private right of action may be effective when a particular individual is harmed by an individual or corporation and is seeking damages to compensate or redress that particular harm.
What types of privacy violations are the most common? How have these been addressed?

The most common types of privacy violations are inadvertent disclosures or privacy breaches of personal information, including personal health information. In particular, these violations usually stem from the improper retention, transfer and disclosure of personal information.

Privacy breaches are addressed in a variety of ways, depending on the type and amount of information disclosed. For example, under PHIPA, if health information is stolen, lost, or accessed by unauthorized persons, the health information custodian must notify the affected individual at the first reasonable opportunity and should take immediate steps to contain the breach. Further, the Commissioner may order the health information custodian to take corrective action such as requiring the custodian to implement a certain procedure when handling personal health information or conduct privacy training.
What forms of privacy education has Canada pursued? What audiences have been targeted? Which efforts have been the most successful and why?

Canadian institutions and organizations have pursued a wide variety of privacy education initiatives including programs that award professional designations (e.g. IAPP, CAPAPA, University of Toronto Identity, Privacy and Security Initiative, University of Alberta Program).

Our Office has led a wide variety of educational initiatives to spread the word about privacy protection and freedom of information under our Ontario legislation. We have focused on a variety of audiences from the general public to individuals who deal with privacy and access to information issues as part of their daily professional role.

Initiatives include frequent contact between our Information Officers and the public, and dozens of marketing materials geared to providing guidance (e.g. “Circle of Care: Sharing of Personal Health Information for Health-Care purposes”, “What to do When Faced With a Privacy Breach: Guidelines for the Health Sector”). Our Office has developed Educational Resource Guides (Grade 5, Grade 10, Grades 11/12), which have been added to the formal Ontario curriculum to help teachers educate about privacy protection. Commissioner Cavoukian participates in extensive presentations and speeches at numerous conferences and events. As well, representatives from our Office reach out into the community to educate about our offerings and role (hospitals, conference, community events etc.). In addition, to educate Ontarians about privacy protection, the IPC also allots significant resources to many marketing initiatives including a quarterly e-newsletter, video production, and social media outreach. Most recently, we circulated an online tool kit (available via USB as well), to assist new Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Co-ordinators in the public sector. Most of our resources are available in English and French.

Without a doubt, the IPC’s most successful educational effort thus far is in the area of PbD, now an international standard. This Ontario-made solution was created by Commissioner Cavoukian who has led the IPC in partnering with global stalwarts such as IBM, Intel, and Nokia to advance Privacy by Design, and to foster innovation in many fields, including biometrics, the Smart Grid and even Targeted Advertising. Privacy by Design knows no boundaries and makes sense for everyone — especially businesses. Not only is it cheaper to build in privacy before a breach occurs, it is also a compelling way to win the trust of clients and build a successful brand.
What [have] proven to be [the main] challenges or obstacles to protecting privacy in Canada?

The most common obstacle to protecting privacy is that key stakeholders hold on to misconceptions about privacy.
Misconception #1 – Privacy is dead or obsolete.
Misconception #2 – Privacy stops us from performing our job.
Misconception #3 – With the massive growth of online social media, you cannot have both widespread connectivity and privacy.

Not only do these misconceptions contradict each other, they are both dead wrong!

Privacy is alive and well and more relevant than ever. Consider, for example, that the same technologies that serve to threaten privacy may also be enlisted to support it. Properly understood, privacy is becoming increasingly critical to achieving success in the new economy. In this environment, PbD offers a principled, flexible, and technology-neutral vehicle for engaging with privacy issues, and for resolving them in ways that support multiple outcomes in a full functionality, positive-sum, win-win scenario.

It does so by ensuring that privacy is built in right up front, directly into the design specifications and architecture of new systems and processes.

PbD seeks to accommodate all legitimate interests and objectives in a positive-sum “win-win” manner, not through a dated, zero-sum approach, where unnecessary trade-offs are made. PbD avoids the pretense of false dichotomies or unnecessary trade-offs, such as privacy vs. security, demonstrating that it is possible to have both. For more on PbD, go to www.privacybydesign.ca

Dr. Ann Cavoukian, Ph.D., Information and Privacy Commissioner, Ontario, Canada

Dr. Ann Cavoukian is recognized as one of the leading privacy experts in the world. Noted for her seminal work on Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs) in 1995, her concept of Privacy by Design seeks to proactively embed privacy into the design specifications of information technology and accountable business practices, thereby achieving the strongest protection possible. In October, 2010, regulators from around the world gathered at the annual assembly of International Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners in Jerusalem, Israel, and unanimously passed a landmark Resolution recognizing Privacy by Design as an essential component of fundamental privacy protection. This was followed by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s inclusion of Privacy by Design as one of its three recommended practices for protecting online privacy – a major validation of its significance.

An avowed believer in the role that technology can play in the protection of privacy, Dr. Cavoukian’s leadership has seen her office develop a number of tools and procedures to ensure that privacy is strongly protected, not only in Canada, but around the world. She has been involved in numerous international committees focused on privacy, security, technology and business, and endeavours to focus on strengthening consumer confidence and trust in emerging technology applications.

Dr. Cavoukian serves as the Chair of the Identity, Privacy and Security Institute at the University of Toronto, Canada. She is also a member of several Boards including, the European Biometrics Forum, Future of Privacy Forum, RIM Council, and has been conferred a Distinguished Fellow of the Ponemon Institute. Dr. Cavoukian was honoured with the prestigious Kristian Beckman Award in 2011 for her pioneering work on Privacy by Design and privacy protection in modern international environments. In the same year, Dr. Cavoukian was also named by Intelligent Utility Magazine as one of the Top 11 Movers and Shakers for the Global Smart Grid industry, received the SC Canada Privacy Professional of the Year Award and was honoured by the University of Alberta Information Access and Protection of Privacy Program for her positive contribution to the field of privacy. Most recently in November 2011, Dr. Cavoukian was ranked by Women of Influence Inc. as one of the top 25 Women of Influence recognizing her contribution to the Canadian and global economy. This award follows her recognition in 2007 by the Women’s Executive Network as one of the Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada.

Notes

[1].Information and Privacy Commissioner/Ontario, Landmark Resolution passed to preserve the Future of Privacy, http://www.ipc.on.ca/images/Resources/2010-10-29-Resolution-e_1.pdf
[2].For a discussion of how governments might employ an PbD approach to privacy regulation, see Commissioner Cavoukian’s White Paper, Privacy by Design in Law, Policy, and Practice available at:
http://www.ipc.on.ca/english/Resources/Discussion-Papers/Discussion-Papers-Summary/?id=1095
[3].See the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, S.C. 2000, c. 5 (Can.), http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/laws/stat/sc-2000-c-5/latest/sc-2000-c-5.html.
[4].Englander v. Telus Communications Inc., 2004 FCA 387, Locus Para. 38-46.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/interview-with-anne-cavoukian

All India Privacy Symposium

praskrishna — 2012-02-27T11:08:32Z

Privacy India in partnership with the International Development Research Centre, Canada, Society in Action Group, Gurgaon, Privacy International, UK and Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative is organizing the All India Privacy Symposium at the India International Centre, New Delhi on Saturday, February 4, 2012.

Since June 2010, Privacy India has been engaging in discussions with policy makers, the public and sectoral experts about privacy in India. The discussions have ranged from topics of identity and privacy, to minority rights and privacy, and consumer privacy. The findings of our research show that privacy was a neglected area of study for India in the past, however, this is changing. Advancements in technology, the introduction of e-governance initiatives like the National Fibre Optic Network, the introduction of new legislations, and debates surrounding national security, have brought privacy debates to the forefront in India. Although currently sectoral legislation deals with privacy issues, e.g., the Telegraph Act or RBI guidelines for banking, India has just begun to consider a horizontal legislation that deals comprehensively with privacy across all contexts. This conference is an opportunity to look forward to what could be the future scope of privacy in India.

Privacy India was set up in collaboration with the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore and Society in Action Group, Gurgaon, under the auspices of an international organization ‘Privacy International’. Privacy International is a non-profit group that provides assistance to civil society groups, governments, international and regional bodies, the media and the public in a number of countries. For more info, visit its website.

This is a public meeting. For participation in the event, get in touch with Elonnai (elonnai@cis-india.org)

Symposium Advisors

Sunil Abraham, Centre for Internet &Society (www.cis-india.org)
Rajan Gandhi, Society in Action Group
Phet Sayo, IDRC (www.idrc.org)
Gus Hosein, Privacy International (www.privacyinternational.org)
Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Centre for Law and Policy Research, Bangalore (www.clpr.org.in)
Vickram Crishna, Privacy International (www.privacyinternational.org)

Agenda

09:30- 10:00	Registration
10:00- 10:15	Welcome & Introduction to Privacy India Elonnai Hickok (Policy Advocate, Privacy India)
10:15- 10:30	Tea Break
10:30- 11:30	Panel I: Privacy and Transparency Moderator: Sunil Abraham (Executive Director, Centre for Internet & Society) Panelists: Prashant Bhushan (Senior Advocate, New Delhi), Simon Davies (Director General, Privacy International, UK), Ponnurangam K (Assistant Prof, IIIT New Delhi), Chitra Ahanthem (Journalist, Imphal), Aruna Roy (Social & Political Activist), Deepak Maheshwari (Director Corporate Affairs, Microsoft) Poster:Srishti Goyal (Law Student)
11:30- 12:30	Panel II: Privacy and E-Governance Initiatives Moderator: Sudhir Krishnaswamy (Professor, Azim Premji University) Panelists: Anant Maringanti (Independent Social Researcher), Usha Ramanathan (Advocate&Social Activist), Ram Sewak Sharma (Director General, UIDAI), Gus Hosein (Executive Director, Privacy International, UK), R K Singh (Union Home Secretary, New Delhi), Apar Gupta (Advocate, Supreme Court of India) Poster: Adrija Das (Law Student)
12:30- 13:30	Lunch
13:30- 14:30	Panel III: Privacy and National Security Moderator: Justice A P Shah (Former Chief Justice, Delhi High Court)* Panelists: Menaka Guruswamy (Advocate, Supreme Court, New Delhi), Amol Sharma (Journalist, Wall Street Journal)*, Saikat Datta (Journalist, DNA), Eric King (Human Rights and Technology Advisor, Privacy International, UK), Prasanth Sugathan (Legal Counsel, Software Freedom Law Center) and Oxblood Ruffin (Cult of the Dead Cow Security and Publishing Collective) Poster: Suchithra Menon (Law Student)
14:30- 15:30	Panel IV: Privacy and Banking Moderator: Prashant Iyengar (Associate Professor, Jindal Law University) Panelists: M R Umarji (Chief Legal Advisor, IBA), N A Vijayashankar (Cyber Law Expert), Sucheta Dalal (Managing Editor, MoneyLife Magazine)*, Malavika Jayaram (Advocate, Bangalore) Poster: Malavika Chandu (Law Student)
15:30- 15:45	Tea Break
15:45- 16:45	Panel V: Privacy and Health Moderator: Ashok Row Kavi (Journalist & LGBT Activist) Panelists: K K Abraham (President, Indian Network for People with HIV), Shri Sayan Chatterjee (Secretary, National Aids Control Organization), Dr V M Katoch (Secretary, Department of Health Research), Dr B S Bedi (Advisor, CDAC & Media Lab Asia) Poster: Danish Sheikh (Alternative Law Forum)
16:45- 17:00	The Way Forward Elonnai Hickok (Policy Advocate, Privacy India)

Bios of Speakers

Usha Ramanathan

Usha Ramanathan is an internationally recognized expert on the jurisprudence of law, poverty and rights. She writes and speaks on leading issues like the Bhopal gas leak tragedy, mass displacement, civil liberties, criminal law, environment and the judicial process. She is involved in the UID project and has written and debated extensively on it. She is a member of Amnesty International's Advisory Panel on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and has been called upon by the World Health Organisation as a expert on mental health on various occasions. Her writings can be found at http://www.ielrc.org/.

NA.Vijayashankar

NA.Vijayashankar, more popularly known as Naavi, is a Techno Legal Information Security Consultant based in Bangalore, India. Naavi is a pioneer in the field of Cyber Law in India. He is the author of the first book (1999) and first E-Book (2003) on Cyber Laws in India. He has also authored a book titled “Cyber Laws, Corporate Mantra for the Digital Era”, “Cyber Laws Demystified” and “Cyber Laws for Engineers” as well as a book on Cyber Crimes in Kannada.

Naavi is the founder of www.cyberlawcollege.com which is the pioneering virtual educational institution in India dedicated to Cyber Law Education. Cyber Law College presently conducts offline and virtual courses on Cyber Laws. It has conducted several courses in association with law colleges in Karnataka such as KLE Law College, Bangalore, JSS Law College, Mysore, SDM law college Mangalore and KLE Law College Hubli.

Naavi is also the founder of www.naavi.org the premier Cyber Law Portal in India. Naavi has been engaged in the training of Police in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and conducts several courses in Cyber Laws for different audiences. He has been a guest faculty in a number of institutions including NPA, IDRBT, DTRI, ISACA, NADT, LBS National Academy, Judicial Academies, NALSAR, etc., as well as several law, engineering and management institutions.

Naavi has over three decades of senior Corporate executive experience behind him. He has been an ex-Banker and Consultant to several Companies in IT Services. He has conducted hundreds of training sessions to professionals of various disciplines such as bankers, lawyers, chartered accountants, engineers, software professionals, police and judicial officers through workshops and in-house training programmes in cyber laws, cyber crimes, information security and related areas.

Chitra Ahanthem

Chitra Ahanthem is a features writer with Imphal Free Press, published in Imphal, Manipur. She is also a freelance writer and researcher on issues around HIV/AIDS, child rights, conflict and gender.

Baljit Singh Bedi

Baljit Singh Bedi did his B.Tech and M.Tech. from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi. After serving for five years in the Centre for Applied Research in Electronics (CARE) IIT, Delhi he joined the Department of Information Technology (DIT), Ministry of Communication & IT (MCIT), Government of India. The major responsibilities and contributions over the years cover conceptualizing, evolving and implementation of a number of major schemes/programmes and projects in the field of electronics and IT applications with primary role in healthcare. He was instrumental in starting an integrated programme in promoting the area of Electronics, IT and Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Standards in Healthcare in India. As the head of Medical Electronics & Telemedicine division, he was looking after the activity of promotion of e-health & tele–health technology and R&D in medical electronics and launched a number of schemes in India. He was part of the National Task Force Telemedicine in India set up by the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare (MoH&FW), Government of India and headed the Group on Standards. He was a Member of National Knowledge Commission’s Working Group on India-Health Information Network Development (I-HIND) and is part of the Advisory Group for follow-up implementation program under the consideration of MoH&FW. He is actively involved in policy, development and deployment programmes of IT in Health initiatives of DIT, MoH&FW, and Media Lab Asia. He is a member of the National Committee set up by MoH&FW for EMR Standardization and Heading its Task Group on Interoperability. He is also International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Expert for e-Health Standardization. He is Executive Member of Indian Association of Medical Informatics (IAMI) and President, Telemedicine Society of India (TSI). At present, he is an Adviser to the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), Scientific Society of MCIT, Government of India.

Deepak Maheshwari

Deepak Maheshwari is Director – Corporate Affairs with Microsoft in India and responsible for interactions with the policymakers & regulators as well as with industry associations & the civil society organizations. An active participant and a keen observer of the interplay between technological innovation and socio-economic development, he has been closely associated with development & evolution of Information & Communication Technology policy, law & regulation for more than a decade and is often invited as a speaker and a contributor of articles & opinions in the media.

He has been active in several trade associations and served as committee chair & co-chair. He served for two consecutive terms as the elected secretary in the ISP Association of India and co-founded National Internet eXchange of India (NIXI) as well as the ITU-APT Foundation of India. He is also a member on the academic board of the IIM Ahmedabad- IDEA Telecom Centre of Excellence.

At times mistaken as a lawyer, he was actually awarded degree in engineering by one of India’s leading technical institute IT-BHU. His professional experience of more than 2 decades spans functional responsibilities across sales, marketing, operations and last but not the least, corporate affairs.

*Participants to be confirmed

Download the poster here
Download the agenda here (PDF, 755 KB)

VIDEOS

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/privacy-symposium

What is Dilligaf?

nishant — 2011-12-01T09:52:53Z

On the web, time moves at the speed of thought: Groups emerge, proliferate and are abandoned as new trends and fads take precedence. Nowhere else is this dramatic flux as apparent as in the language that evolves online. While SMS lingo – like TTYL (Talk To You Later) and LOL (Laughing Out Loud)– has endured and become a part of everyday language, new forms of speech are taking over.

“Leetspeak” or “L33t” (derived the word “elite”), for example, incorporate numbers in words, giving geeks their own language. One that they use to bypass firewalls and filters trained to recognize certain words – so in “l33t”-speak, porn becomes Pr0n, and onwards moves mankind.

These mutations are not permanent: Like organisms, they grow to form new constellations of words and expressions demanding that users keep pace. And while purists have bled their hearts out, lamenting the savage attack on the language and grammar that digital technology has spawned, there is also a recognition of the fact that these linguistic developments are not merely experiments – they capture the spirit of a democratized knowledge system and the opening up of the information highway. User-generated content sites like Wikipedia, YouTube and Tumblr embody these acronyms and attitudes, where any attempt at regulation, control or imposition of authority is usually met with the reply – DILLIGAF (Do I Look Like I Give A F***)?

DILLIGAFers – people who live a significant part of their lives online – might scoff at older forms of institutional control, but they don’t necessarily live in a space of anarchy, either. For example, academic credentials, institutional affliations and geopolitical location might not bear the same weight on Wikipedia as while writing a book, but there are other ways in which digital rank can be pulled. Your overall Internet experience, editing history and ability to garner mass support for your views are more important in determining your place in Wikipedia’s hierarchy. Any attempt at pulling rank with assets like money, influence or name are casually discarded with succinct exclamations like WTF (What The F***) and BFD (Big F****ing Deal).

One of the defining characteristics of the DILLIGAF generation is their fiercely independent spirit. While they’re constantly connected and incessantly sharing information, they are also terribly alone. When it comes to searching for information, finding people or exploring the web, personal skills with different digital tools and platforms makes one independent. In fact, one of the deterrents for the less technically inclined to join online communities is the idea that they’re supposed to find their own way as they tread unknown digital paths. Hence, DILLIGAFers often resort to acronyms like RTFM (Read The F***ing Manual) for people (read: the rest of us) who ask for information that can be easily found. And with the rapid Googlization of the world, an obvious question is met with an obvious answer – RTFG (Read The F****ing Google).

Geeks have invented many interesting and creative acronyms to make their voices heard, and while some of the acronyms predate the Internet, they often capture the irony of online and offline existence. SNAFU (Situation Normal: All F***ed Up), an acronym that supposedly emerged in America during the Second World War, often finds its way into describing the complexity of our lives. The dramatic nature of interactions, the struggle to establish trust and the complex structure of experiences all find voice online. FML (F*** My Life), an acronym as well as a popular networking site, is a sterling example of such a space, where people share stories of how things went wrong for them, allowing other users to rate their stories on a sympathy meter.

One of the most delicious ironies of the online space is that while irreverence might find a way into acronyms, unnecessary profanity is looked down upon. If you go around swearing on discussion pages, you will immediately be ostracized, and quite possibly asked to STFU (Shut The F*** Up).

This article by Nishant Shah was published in GQ India on September 4, 2011.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/what-is-dilligaf

Dialogue Cafe @ Centre for Internet and Society

praskrishna — 2011-12-07T11:10:08Z

The Centre for Internet and Society announces the launch of its dialogue cafe, where every month, we approach seminal thinkers, scholars and practitioners to help explore knowledge paradigms that help us understand and research techno-social realities through innovative thought, concepts and frameworks.

The dialogue cafe draws upon different disciplines, histories, perspectives and intellectual legacies in order to respond to a seminal piece of writing that has changed, challenged and shaped the contours of interdisciplinary science and technology studies.

The dialogue cafe initiates several strands of dialogues — between critical thinkers and canonical texts, between different paradigm of knowledges that interact with digital and internet technologies, and between interlocutors located in different disciplines, to initiate critical thought/work for new and innovative research in the field of Internet and Society.

For its first brew of conversations, the Dialogue Cafe serves you...

Computation and the Humanities: Revisiting a Silent Revolution

Steve Jobs’ comments on how “technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities” made Apple hearts sing is today widely re-circulated, but not fully comprehended. We often take this to be the mark of one man’s genius, rather than the symptom of a broader interdisciplinary history. Noted Artificial Intelligence scholar Philip Agre recalls, “When I was a graduate student in artificial intelligence, the humanities were not held in high regard. They were vague and woolly, they employed impenetrable jargons, and they engaged in "meta-level bickering that never decides anything".

What happened, in the formative decades of Jobs and Agre’s generation, to bring technology and the humanities into conversation? What have the results been, other than well-designed personal computational devices, and what is the significance for us? On December 2, 2011, the Centre for Internet and Society invites you to a Dialogue Cafe, where we engage in exploring what this all means and what kinds of labour it might take to ‘marry’ these disparate ways of knowing.

As a response to Philip Agre’s seminal essay on “Critical Technology Practice”, the cafe will begin with an exposition by Kavita Philip (University of California, Irvine), opening up into a critical response spearheaded by Cherry Matthew, and leading to a larger dialogue with the audience, exploring fault lines of interdisciplinary research and challenges of integrated technology studies.

For more background on these questions, audience is encouraged (but not required) to explore the materials at Agre’s home page http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/, and STSrelated links from Wikipedia’s page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science,_technology_and_society

VIDEOS

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/dialogue-cafe

Move over Kolaveri di, here comes Gowda

praskrishna — 2011-11-28T06:58:54Z

Transparency is the buzzword in governance and chief minister DV Sadananda Gowda is eager to set a new benchmark. You could soon watch what the chief minister is doing at office, live on YouTube. This article was published in dailybhaskar.com on November 28, 2011.

Cameras are being installed at the chief minister's office in Vidhana Soudha and his home office, Krishna. The live footage will be uploaded to YouTube. "I always wanted to maintain transparency in my functioning. Very soon, I will put it to work, when people can watch me live at what I am doing when inoffice. Let the people see who come to meet me, what I do and how I work. This will set a new example, but there will be no compulsion for my colleagues to emulate me. It is entirely up to them whether to follow me or not," said Gowda on Sunday.

Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy has already set a precedent by installing cameras in his office. On July 1 this year, the day Chandy's experiment went 'live', one lakh visitors logged in. Talking to The New York Times earlier this year, Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, said "He applauded Chandy's webcams, even if the effort amounted to no more than tokenism."This type of tokenism is also quite useful," The NYT reported Abraham as saying.

In Karnataka, the much-hyped Citizens' Charter would be implemented after the state legislature, which begins on December 6, ends. The cabinet had already cleared the proposal and the bill on time-bound delivery of public services would be introduced in the session, added Gowda.

The proposed bill will make it mandatory for officials in government offices to deliver public services within stipulated period of time and failure to do so would make them liable for penal action and fine to be computed for every day of delay.

Already, Bescom chief P Manivannan has installed a webcam in his office. The NYT earlier reported Manivannan as saying that "he was installing a 'hemispheric' camera that would capture the goings-on in his entire office rather than just show his visitors."

Read the original published in dailybhaskar.com here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/here-comes-gowda

Is Facebook tracking your virtual footprints?

praskrishna — 2011-11-24T03:02:00Z

Social media experts claim number of cases of privacy violations against the site has increased in past few months; Facebook rubbishes the allegations. This article by Sheetal Sukhija was published in MidDay on 22 November 2011.

If you thought your online footprints would be erased by merely clicking on the 'delete web history' option and no one would ever know about your virtual movements, think again.

For, some popular social networking sites have been accused of tracking their users' movements on the Internet even when they log out from the sites.

According to reports in the international media, Facebook, the virtual face of around 80 crore people across the globe, is battling a series of legal cases for alleged violating users' privacy worldwide.

While the social media giant has categorically said that they have not misused any user data, internet experts have dubbed the website 'the big brother of new media'.

"Many users claim that when they log onto their accounts, Facebook automatically installs a cookie onto a user's browser, which keeps tracking their movement on the internet.

We believe that Facebook might be using this just to boost their marketing and not to sell this data to any third party," said Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre For Internet and Society.

Experts also believe that using such strategies have now made Facebook the world leader when it comes to credible demographic information.

"Facebook has achieved the status of possessing the most accurate demographic information. It is a credible source to understand consumer habits of a single unique user and even user groups. However, using such information is surely a violation of privacy," he added.

Former member of NASSCOM, Pratap Reddy, believes that often people ignore the 'fine print' or the agreement page while creating an account on a social networking site or elsewhere on the net. "When users sign up on these social networking websites, they often ignore the fine print.

When legal cases come up, companies often defend their stance by saying that their agreement page (or privacy policy page) mentioned all such things and make up a leeway for themselves," argued Reddy.

He added, "This is surely a violation, but there is also a positive side to this. Such websites are only trying to facilitate users better, based on their past web history. This helps them put you onto people/issues/topics that you have previously searched - like a mediator," added Reddy.

All about marketing?
Experts argued that this is not for the first time a website is being sued for such an act. In the past, Google, Adobe, Microsoft, Yahoo and other online advertising agencies too have been criticised for using such controversial tracking cookie technology.

According to reports, users from across the world have been taking legal recourse after pointing out that Facebook used cookie technology to track their virtual movements even after they have logged out of the social networking site.

Australian blogger Nik Cubrilovic is the latest user to join the growing list of people suing the website for violating federal wiretap laws, reported a UK-based tabloid.

The other side
Defending their stance, Facebook argued in its official statement that they are not tracking users across the web.

Facebook's official stance: Facebook does not track users across the web. Instead, we use cookies on social plugins to personalise content, to help maintain and improve what we do, or for safety and security.

No information we receive when you see a social plugins is used to target ads, we delete or anonymise this information within 90 days, and we never sell your information.

Specific to logged out cookies, they are used for safety and protection. They are used for identifying spammers and phishers, detecting when somebody unauthorised is trying to access your account, helping you get back into your account if you get hacked, disabling registration for a under-age users who try to re-register with a different birth date, powering account security features such as 2nd factor login approvals and notification and identifying shared computers to discourage the use of 'keep me logged in'.

Security tips
Internet security software experts suggest that installing strong anti-virus software would be the first step towards protecting your privacy.

Installing an anti-virus software
Every such software has a social network control option that prompts users when any unsolicited cookie is installed. By using this option, a user holds the right to refuse such installations.

Read the original article published in MidDay here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/facebook-tracking-footprints

SOPA: The bill that could kill the Internet

praskrishna — 2011-11-18T07:26:30Z

As the US government’s House Judiciary Committee begins hearings on the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act, (SOPA), both supporters and opponents are ramping up their campaigning, with big names getting involved. And so they should. SOPA’s stakes are no less than the future of the Internet itself.

The key problem with SOPA is that it seeks to allow any copyright holder to sever any website’s relationship with online advertising networks or credit card processing services, simply by pointing the finger. As Ars Technica explains:

Calling its plan a “market-based system to protect US customers and prevent US funding of sites dedicated to theft of US property,” the new bill gives broad powers to private actors. Any holder of intellectual property rights could simply send a letter to ad network operators like Google and to payment processors like MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal, demanding these companies cut off access to any site the IP holder names as an infringer.

[…] So long as the intellectual property holders include some “specific facts” supporting their infringement claim, ad networks and payment processors will have five days to cut off contact with the website in question.

The bill also gives the government the power to get an injunction against foreign sites which would force ISPs to, within five days, ”prevent access by its subscribers located within the United States to the foreign infringing site.” Essentially, it obliges ISPs to break their own DNS servers by filtering or redirecting users who try to access an accused site. It would also ban any tools which allow circumvention of such blocks.

It doesn’t take a genius to see how this could be abused: An aggrieved party accuses a site of infringement, with or without reliable evidence, and suddenly that site can no longer accept credit cards or PayPal payments and its advertising revenue dries up completely. And we know that the IP industry isn’t above false accusations of copyright infringement. It’s not just business websites that could be affected, but open source projects too.

Opponents currently include businesses such as Google, Facebook, Zynga, eBay, Twitter, Yahoo!, AOL, and LinkedIn who, together, sent a letter; advocates such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Reporters Without Borders, and Human Rights Watch; as well as eleven members of the House of Representatives who have also written a letter to the House Judiciary Committee. Another letter from human rights groups includes India’s Centre for Internet and Society as well as the Church of Sweden.

There are also complaints that the House Judiciary Committee is trying to push the legislation through with undue haste. Says PCWorld:

Critics of the legislation also complained that the US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee appears to be fast-tracking the bill before opposition can build. At a 10 am hearing Wednesday, five of six witnesses are likely to speak in favor of SOPA, with only Google opposed. Witnesses the Motion Picture Association of America, trade union the AFL-CIO and pharmaceutical company Pfizer have all voiced support for the bill.

No public interest groups, Internet engineers or human rights groups have been invited to the hearing, said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a digital rights group. “This is really being railroaded, without a full public debate,” she said.

Indeed, the tone of the Committee’s so-called fact sheet, which lays out a series of ‘myths’ and ‘facts’, gives cause for concern, implying as it does that they have already decided which side of the fence they will land on. What is also disturbing is that the US Copyright Office — which as a part of the Library of Congress, one would expect to be impartial and evidence-led — will be offering an “unqualified endorsement“:

“It is my view that if Congress does not continue to provide serious responses to online piracy, the US copyright system will ultimately fail,” [Copyright Office director Maria] Pallante’s testimony says.

Pallante and representatives from Pfizer, the Motion Picture Association of America, the AFL-CIO, and Mastercard, all of whom support the bill, will be testifying tomorrow before the House Judiciary committee.

For Americans who are unimpressed by this latest move from the content industries to control the Internet, there is a letter writing campaign encouraging people to contact their congressperson. For non-Americans, Avaaz has set up a Save the Internet petition which currently has 70,000 signatures and is racking up hundreds of new signatures every minute.

There’s no doubt that tech journalists, free software advocates and digital rights campaigners and internet businesses worldwide will be glued to coverage of today’s Judiciary hearing. But, given the power of the copyright industry’s lobbying arms, it is hard to expect discussions to conclude satisfactorily. It may just be that the entire Internet will have to rely on the strength of the US Constitution, which SOPA may contravene, to save it.

This article by Suw Charman-Anderson was published in Firspost.Technology on November 16, 2011. The original can be read here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/bill-could-kill-internet

International human rights community vs SOPA

praskrishna — 2011-11-28T10:15:11Z

The Centre for Internet and Society was mentioned in a news story published in BoingBoing. Cory Doctorow wrote the story published on November 17, 2011.

An enormous, diverse global coalition of press freedom and human rights groups have signed onto a letter (PDF) opposing America's Stop Online Piracy Act, the worst proposed Internet law in the USA's legislative history. Included signatories are as varied as India's Center for Internet and Society, the Church of Sweden, Colombia's Karisma, the UK Open Rights Group, and Reporters Without Borders. The letter itself is a great piece of writing: "This is as unacceptable to the international community as it would be if a foreign country were to impose similar measures on the United States." (Thanks, Alan!)

Read the original published in BoingBoing here

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

The 2nd IJLT-CIS Lecture Series — A Post-event Report

praskrishna — 2011-11-17T10:25:56Z

The Indian Journal of Law and Technology (IJLT) and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), organised the 2nd IJLT-CIS Lecture Series on the 21st and 22nd of May 2011 at the National Law School of India University, Nagarbhavi, Bangalore. The main theme for this year was Emerging Issues in Privacy Law: Law, Policy and Practice.

Speakers and Topics

Spread over two days, the National Law School hosted six speakers who held forth on the different aspects of privacy law, speaking from perspectives that were grounded in theory and actual practice and some that were India-centric while others applied equally to any jurisdiction.

Vivek Durai, Partner, Atman Law Partners, addressed the gathering and gave the general introduction to the need for a discussion relating to privacy and the law. He spoke of technology and certain current events, including technological advances, have made privacy an issue with which serious engagement of the law has become imperative.

Usha Ramanathan, an independent law researcher, spoke of the Unique Identity Project (Aadhar) launched by the Government of India and its implications on the privacy and data relating to the citizens. Ms. Ramanathan was critical of the Government’s plans on the basis that an ill-planned and executed project that sought to collect data such as this could provide easy fodder for data-mining. The latest 2011 rules that outline the relationship between the citizen and the state and the extent of privacy the citizen has in respect of this relationship.

Hamish Fraser, a leading Australian practitioner in the field of technology law, addressed the gathering via video conference and spoke about cloud computing and privacy of parties using such facilities. He highlighted how technology such as cloud computing where the storage of data is almost fully virtual, with only the weakest of links to any physical storage space, were being increasingly widely used. He helped provide a practitioners perspective to the lecture as well by discussing how companies and individuals seeking to utilise cloud computing facilities, particularly for business purposes, must check for some essential legal provisions that would allow them to retain control over their data and prevent their data from being misappropriated by the provider of the virtual storage space in the cloud. He briefly also discussed the draft Australian privacy legislation.

Sean Blagsvedt, founder of Baba Jobs, discussed the interplay between privacy and transparency and argued convincingly that under certain circumstances, transparency holds greater value than blind protection of privacy. He spoke of his experience in setting up Baba Jobs that seeks to act as a job portal-cum-social networking site for persons providing essential services such as plumbers, electricians, carpenters, house painters, etc. Rather than seeking to strictly protect the details and identity of these persons, Blagsvedt found that one of the most important factors for future employers while considering hiring such service personnel were the details of their previous assignments and testimonials from previous employers – the transparency that Baba Jobs offered became its USP. Blagsvedt talked of how a misplaced over-emphasis on privacy could often lead to greater detriments than benefits and prevent trust due to a lack of information. He concluded by predicting that as people increasingly shifted social and commercial transactions to the online world, the demands for privacy online would soon be offset by demands for greater transparency.

Sudhir Krishnaswamy, Professor of Law at the Azim Premji University, Bangalore delivered a lecture on the state and privacy in India illustrating the development of the law on the matter. He also discussed about the balance that needs to be struck between the individual’s requirement for privacy and the state’s desire for secrecy. He also spoke about two manners in which to conceptualise privacy — recognising privacy as an inherent right that may be at times restricted to a certain extent, vis-a-vis seeing privacy as a right that the state grants to a citizen.

Abhayraj Naik, Assistant Professor, Jindal Global Law School, Sonepat, gave a lecture on informational privacy in comparative contexts. The discussion centred on information surveillance in different jurisdictions and how the values attached to the attribution of information reflects in the laws relating to privacy in those different jurisdictions. His approach included mathematical modelling of information attribution and provided an interdisciplinary approach.

Participation

The lecture series saw registration from over 50 people, including students from law schools all over the country, practitioners, and even educators. Since the lectures were streamed live online, and this was only the second event in NLS to use this facility apart from the Annual Convocation, many more people listened to the lectures online. The lectures were available online for a period of one week after the conclusion of the lecture series.

IJLT-CIS Lecture Series 2011 Registration

The following people participated in the event:

Adithya Banavar, Akanksha Arora, Anand VJ, Aniket Singhania, Ankit Verma, Anupama Kumar, Aparna Gokhale, Arjun Krishnamoorthy, Arjun Sharma, Arun Menon, Asif Ayaz, B. N. Vivek, Batool, Chirag Tanna, Deepakar Livingston.P., Deepthi R, Dheer Bhatnagar, Dinesh Subramany, Esha Goel, Gopalakrishnan R., J Suresh, Jamshed Ansari, Kanti Jadia, Khadeeja Nadeem, Khumtiya Debbarma, Mani Bhushan, Manish, Nayan Jain, Neha Baglani, Panduranga Acharya, Partha Chakravarty, Parul Bali, Prashanth Ramdas, Prateek Rath, Preyanka Sapru, Prianca Ravichander, Priytosh Singh, Purushotham.G, Ralph A, Ruhi Chanda, S. Badrinath, S. Bhushan, S. K. Mohanty, Sahana Manjesh, Sanjana Chappalli, Santosh Dindima, Shalini Iyengar, Shalini S, Sibani Saxena, Spoorthy M. S., Tarang Shashishekar, Tarun Kovvali, Tejaswini Rajkumar, Vaishali Kant, and Y. Shiva Santosh Kumar.

See the Letter of Agreement [PDF, 1 MB]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/ijlt-cis-lecture-series-report

Exposing Data: Art Slash Activism

yelena — 2013-03-01T05:44:23Z

Tactical Tech and the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) invite you to the first round of discussions on the intersection of Art and Activism at CIS office in Bangalore on 28 November 2011. Ward Smith (Lecturer, University of California, LA), Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski (Co-founders, Tactical Technology Collective), Ayisha Abraham (Film maker, Srishti School of Art Design) and Zainab Bawa (Research Fellow, Centre for Internet and Society) are leading the conversations.

The Exposing Data Project

An NGO sets up a database to track elected representatives’ participation in the Parliament, the spending for their constituency, and keeping a track of their political mandates and promises.

A geographer tracks the movements of US Government satellites and visualises their paths to form curious visuals of ‘State secrets’.

A photographer travels to an island in the Pacific Ocean to take pictures of the plastic debris found in the stomach of a Laysan albatross carcass.

Each of these examples is about how data that serves as evidence can be collected and visualised in different formats. The NGO can output its data as infographics, the geographer creates non-cartographic maps and the photographer’s images serve as testimony to increased pollution levels. We live in database times. Never before in human history have we consumed, produced and shared as much data as we do now in bits and bytes through our digital devices, coded as images and graphs and spreadsheets. The power to do so has allowed individuals and communities around the world to expose and reveal things that have been invisibilised and obscured, robbed of language and articulation.

At the same time, the visual immediacy of such data sets and the ability to manipulate it to construct new ways of looking at our reality, often hides the fact that the production and use of data as evidence is not benign or neutral. While data itself claims a certain objective fact value, the politics involved in identifying something as data are subject to strong power confluences.

The Centre for Internet and Society and Tactical Technology Collective, Bangalore, propose the Exposing Data Project as a series of conversations between people working across art, activism, politics, information science, cartography, geography, social sciences, humanities and technology science to share, learn, discuss, debate and explore processes, methods, challenges and implications of what it means to live in a data-rich world.

Art Slash Activism

The first round of discussions will be looking at the intersections of Art and Activism, but without falling into the usual traps of looking at art as the vehicle of activism or activism as a form of art. Hence, instead of Art and Activism, we are looking at Art Slash Activism exploring how data visualisation, data representation, and new forms of data mapping re-articulate what it means to be political.

The event will bring together professionals such as Ward Smith (Lecturer, University of California, LA), Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski (Co-founders, Tactical Technology Collective), Ayisha Abraham (Filmmaker, Srishti School of Art Design) and Zainab Bawa (Research Fellow, Centre for Internet and Society). Rather than being a seminar to instil practical knowledge, the aim of Art Slash Activism is to engage participants in a curated conversation on the use of data as evidence and its dissemination through visual depiction as a catalyst for change. We are seeking a variety of perspectives when answering questions such as whether data can have a universal reach through visual presentation; how we can utilize various forms of representation to spread awareness; and what happens when information cannot be represented as data.

Art Slash Activism is a multidisciplinary learning experience that will involve members of the art community, open data activists, designers, and others active in the processes of social change in a creative, playful and innovative manner that will result in textual and visual documentation which will serve as a knowledge corpus for researchers and practitioners interested in these questions.

Bio of the Speakers

Zainab Bawa
Zainab is a PhD scholar at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), Bangalore. Zainab primarily works as an independent researcher on issues of governance, politics, property and how technology is embedded in state-citizen interactions and society. In the course of her work, she is associated with the Centre for Internet and Society and the Centre de Sciences Humaines - New Delhi. Zainab is also a designated partner at HasGeek Media LLP, Bangalore.

Ayisha Abraham
Ayisha Abraham lives and works in Bangalore as an installation artist and short filmmaker. She works at the Srishti School of Art, Design, Technology, as a visual arts consultant and is a member of the BAR1 (Bengaluru Artists Residency).

Stephanie Hankey
CO-founder & executive director, Stephanie has been working to strengthen the use of technology by civil society in the global South since 1998, initially working with the Open Society Institute establishing their Technology Support for Civil Society Program, before co-founding Tactical Tech in 2003. Stephanie has a background in information design, was editor-in-chief of Pulp and worked as a creative director and producer for a number of London-based multimedia companies. She has a Masters in Information and Interaction Design from the Royal College of Art London, and a certificate in Campaigning and Lobbying from NCVO.

Marek Tuszynski
Co-founder & director of programmes & technology, Marek has been working to help advocates use technology since 1995. In the mid-nineties he co-founded the International Network of Contemporary Art Centres and worked with others to create a television programme about independent culture in Poland. He was director of the Stefan Batory Foundation’s Internet programme (Warsaw), sat on the board of Klon/Jawor (a research and infrastructure NGO) and The Second Hand Bank. Marek worked as a consultant to many funding agencies focusing on information and communication strategies for civil society in Central Asia.

Ward Smith
Ward Smith is a librarian who works with academics, activists and artists to design and implement information systems that aid in the development and documentation of their work. He has recently worked with the Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, the Arts, Computation, Engineering program at UC Irvine, the Southern California Library, the 2009 Digital Arts and Culture Conference, and rhizome.org.

This event is free and open to everyone. However, we would appreciate a confirmation of attendance ahead of time so as to ensure that your space is reserved. To confirm your attendance please write to: yelena.gyulkhandanyan@gmail.com

VIDEOS

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/art-activism

Comments on the National Policy of Information Technology

praskrishna — 2011-11-09T10:28:31Z

The NPIT 2011 has the laudable goal of making India a ‘knowledge economy with a global role’ by developing and deploying ICT solutions in all sectors to foster development within India and at a global level. The policy identifies several praiseworthy goals such as the promotion of open standards and open technologies, accessibility for persons with disabilities, affordable ICT services, transparency, accountability, technology development for Indian languages, placing data in public domain for use and value addition, using social media to engage with citizens and investing in indigenous R&D and capacity building. We deeply appreciate this initiative of the Department of Information Technology and offer below brief comments to strengthen the draft.

Mission

It may be important to have one mission which is more citizen centric, for instance, to use ICT to empower and mainstream underprivileged sections of the population such as persons with disabilities, economically disadvantaged people, etc. All of the missions currently listed are related to making India an IT hub and around economic/commercial indicators and the focus on the human development aspect seems to be lacking.

Objectives

Objectives 8 and 9 which are dealing with government services could specifically mention accessibility. While access for persons with disabilities is covered in objective 12, it does not imply inherent accessibility of all government services, but merely an enablement of those which are required.

Enforcement Mechanism

While the policy has several commendable goals, there is little indication as to how it will be sought to be implemented. It would be helpful to have clear mention of the responsible authorities and execution mechanisms, including a mechanism for periodic review to ensure that all security, standards and quality guidelines and timelines are met.

Development of Language Technologies

Since the development of language technologies is extremely crucial to ensure that ICT access is possible for persons in both rural and urban areas, affordability should be stressed as a key aspect of this research and open source solutions may come out of public funded research.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/comments-national-policy-information-technology

TRAI urged to take action against P2P throttling and DNS hijacking

Anand Priya Singh — 2012-03-27T06:07:30Z

On 4 November 2010, Anand had sent a complaint letter to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) regarding unethical practices adopted by Internet Service Providers (ISPs), particularly Airtel. The letter was sent by post and through an e-mail. It was addressed to the Advisor, CN & IT, TRAI. Anand got no help from the ISP and the reply from TRAI (No. 340-1\2010-CA/VOLv) stated that he contact the nodal officer. We have reproduced below the complaint letter that Anand sent to TRAI.

The Advisor,
CN & IT, TRAI
New Delhi

Respected Sir,

I wanted to bring to your notice some unethical marketing practices being adopted by Airtel in their broadband market.

ISPs in India, especially Airtel and Tata have recently started to use Domain Name System (DNS) hijacking where they redirect a misspelled or a non-existent website to their own site — where they serve advertisements to make money and these get redirected to Airtel or Tata whenever you connect to the Internet. The reply from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was: "DNS hijacking practice violates the RFC standard for DNS (NXDOMAIN) responses, and can potentially open users to cross-scripting attacks. According to ICANN, the international body responsible for administering top level domain names has published a memorandum highlighting its concerns, affirming that ICANN strongly discourages the use of DNS redirection, wildcards, synthesized responses and any other form of NXDOMAIN substitution in existing Generic Top Level Domains (GTLDs), Country-Code Top Level Domains (CCTLDs) and any other level in the DNS tree for registry-class domain names." See for example, http://goo.gl/lZ2r6 or http://goo.gl/fDLNC

Our ISPs are violating international regulations and exposing the customer to phishing and hacking. Here are their rules: RFC 2308 - Negative Caching of DNS Queries (DNS NCACHE) (rfc2308). See http://goo.gl/QrKLs

I hope TRAI fines Airtel for their unethical practices. Now even toll free customer complaint numbers are no longer toll free. They charge 50 paise per call.

One of the most dangerous things that Airtel and Tata have done is to secretly throttle internet traffic particularly of peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol and not telling the customers, thereby violating the Consumer Protection Act, 1986. In October 2010, Airtel and Tata began using Elitecore's networking bandwidth tool NetVertex to throttle net traffic.

This violates net neutrality principle and could make the internet a cable television system where for different protocols different tariffs would be charged. Please watch this clip on net neutrality.

Since January 2011 Airtel is throttling P2P speeds to 256k from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. If a user has 1\2\4 mbps connection, his\her speeds are being throttled to 256 k. The only legal proof that customers have is the results from this site which tells if your connection is being throttled for specific protocols (for example, http, ftp, torrent, video streaming, email, etc) known as glasnost test.

This forum has many Airtel users complaining about this. For example: http://goo.gl/Utd72, http://goo.gl/uLZdg, http://goo.gl/bfgaE and http://goo.gl/S7lIQ

Sir P2P is controversial as it used to download copyright works but P2P is also used for legitimate files like Linux OS or Legit P2P streaming. Some torrent sites only provide legit torrents, for example,mininova.

In 2006 TRAI had a consultation paper on network neutrality para 3.6.2. In the reply, organisations like Google, Skype and Microsoft recommended that network neutrality be made a law. See the Google letter for network neutrality of August 2010.

In 2011 the TRAI-NGN said that they have not found any ISP violating this but I have been writing to TRAI since October 2010 to warn them about the impending 2 tier internet which is coming to India, page 91.

Like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) which fined Comcast ISP in USA $ 16 million for secretly blocking P2P, TRAI should at least codify network neutrality as a simple sentence stating "All internet traffic irrespective of protocols and carrier shall be treated as neutral" and fine Airtel via Telecom Disputes Settlement Appellate Tribunal for violating Consumer Protection Act, 1986.

FCC passed diluted rules and TRAI should not copy FCC. I hope TRAI takes action against illegal secret P2P throttling and DNS hijacking.

Yours respectfully,

Anand

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/p2p-throttling-and-dns-hijacking

Droidcon India, first Android Conference in Bangalore

praskrishna — 2011-11-24T04:17:12Z

HasGeek is happy to announce the forthcoming Droidcon India on the 18th and 19th of November 2011 at the MLR Convention Centre in Bangalore. Droidcon.com, Bangalore Android User Group, MobileMonday Bangalore, Medianama, Android Advices and the Centre for Internet and Society are the event partners.

Droidcon is India’s first international Android conference and is part of the world’s largest series of Android conferences, with other editions in London, Bucharest (Romania), Brussels, Amsterdam and Berlin. Droidcon India is a response to the booming market for Android, which has seen sales increase by 888.88 per cent in 2010, and reach nearly 50 per cent market share worldwide.

Organized by developers for developers, the multi-track two day event will provide a rich variety of content for delegates by attracting the best speakers in the Android community. HasGeek expects the participation of over 400 delegates, including students, developers, UX and UI designers, and people with strong interests in the Android ecosystem, both from India and beyond.

The sessions will be presented in an informal environment that gives everyone a chance to be heard. The theme for the conference covers a range of topics that include building well designed apps, dealing with device diversity, performance optimization, NFC, Arduino, and usage in the Enterprise. For more details about session topics visit http://goo.gl/F9bEB

For registrations and tickets, visit http://goo.gl/pmXpJ

Following the first day conference on November 18, there will be an after party for this event which will be held at the CounterCulture restaurant.

For more information on tickets and registrations, contact Zainab Bawa @ zainab@hasgeek.in or call @ +91 99454 73641.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/droidcon-india

Netizen Report: Transparency Edition

praskrishna — 2011-11-09T04:31:48Z

Global Voices Online has carried a feature story, "Netizen Report: Transparency Edition". We at CIS had filed an RTI application about website blocking. This is reflected in this article by Rebecca MacKinnon which was posted online on 7 November 2011.

Here at Global Voices Advocacy we believe that transparency by governments and companies about how and when censorship and surveillance takes place is a base-line requirement if the Internet is ever to be governed in a manner that is compatible with free expression, dissent, and citizens' right to organize and assemble. Thus we applaud Google's latest Transparency Report - the company's fourth such report detailing government requests for user data and content removal, as well as the traffic flows (or lack thereof) to Google webistes across the world since July 2009. The new data for January-June 2011 contains more detail than in the past, including data on how Google responded to the requests and whether they were honored. The data comes with a list of caveats including that automated content removal is not logged and that some data cannot be released due to local law. Nonetheless, we hope that Google's data will provide an interesting snap shot of the state of Internet affairs and the data could be used to hold governments accountable to their censorship activities. We believe that if all Internet companies disclosed similar data, the world would be further on its way to being a better place. Many articles have been written analyzing the data. A few of them include:

TechPresident: Google Data Shows Government Internet Surveillance Far Outstrips Wiretap Requests
WIRED: U.S. Requests for Google User Data Spike 29 Percent in Six Months
Huffington Post:The 13 Countries That Request The Most User Data From Google
CNet: Google: Governments seek more about you than ever

Adding to the publicly available data about censorship around the world, the Open Net Initiative has released its research data on global Internet filtering, covering seventy-four countries.

Thuggery: Read the latest news on GVA about bloggers jailed in Egypt, Syria, and Kuwait and spread the word.

Surveillance: As GVA and others have recently reported, 13 Internet filtering devices produced by the California-based company Blue Coat have made their way to Syria. According to the Wall Street Journal, Blue Coat executives say that the company will not sell the devices to countries that are under embargo by the United States, and that the devices found in Syria had been sold to a dealer who claimed they were destined for Iraq.

The Wall Street Journal has had several other items related to the role of companies in global surveillance, including a report on how China's Huawei has been peddling its mobile phone tracking and censoring equipment to Iran.

In India, Research in Motion has set up a facility in Mumbai to help the Indian government carry out lawful surveillance of its BlackBerry services including the messenger chat service, but the WSJ reports that India still has no method to intercept and decode BlackBerry enterprise email.

In Russia, bloggers' influence has apparently made the Kremlin nervous. Reporters Without Borders has condemned plans by the Russian government to deploy new software to track “extremist” content on the web, highlighting concerns about an over-broad definition of “extremist,” and the arbitrary and disproportionate approach to punishment and sanctions against websites. For more on the Russian Internet be sure to follow Global Voices' Runet Echo Project.

Moving on the United States, The Guardian has a fascinating report on the super-secret Intelligence Support Systems World Americas conference held recently in Washington DC, at which surveillance professionals shared the latest surveillance technologies and innovations that they don't want you to know about. Hacktivist and friend of GVA Jacob Appelbaum managed to get in, but was thrown out.

On a more positive note in the United States, the Washington Post reports that since 2009 many Internet companies have been more assertive about challenging “national security letters” from the FBI requesting information about users.

The Guardian reports that Civil liberties and privacy groups in the United Kingdom have raised concerns about the deployment by the London Metropolitan Police of a "covert surveillance technology that can masquerade as a mobile phone network, transmitting a signal that allows authorities to shut off phones remotely, intercept communications and gather data about thousands of users in a targeted area."

Techdirt reports on the European Union's desire to have a “black box' built in to operating systems that would store a record of all of the computer's internet usage. The EU argues that this ability would be useful in cracking down on child pornography. The system that the EU is looking at as a possible candidate for role of ‘black box' is called LogBox. The developer of LogBox claims that the device is for preserving the freedoms and privacy of internet users, although Techdirt points out the fact that this device does little to ‘protect' the privacy of online users, it in fact, would make anonymous actions on the internet much more difficult and would provide governments and law enforcement a huge set of data on every internet user.

Censorship: The chief executives of China's 39 top Internet, telecom, and computer companies have agreed to “strengthen self-control, self-restraint and strict self-discipline” in order to “contain the tendency of spreading online rumours, pornography, fraud and other illegal, harmful information on the internet.” The move comes amidst a broader crackdown on the Internet and social media.

In India, the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society submitted a right to information request to the government's Department of Information Technology, asking for more information about website blocking. Based on DIT's response the Centre observes that “The data provided by the government seemingly conflicts with the data released by the likes of Google." Their conclusion: "Either the DIT is not providing us all the relevant information on blocking, or is not following the law."

Courts in Belgium and Finland have ordered ISPs to block the Pirate Bay.

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee has recently proposed a bill aimed at protecting intellectual property online that some critics describe as the beginning of a "Great Firewall of America". The Electronic Frontier Foundation and others have detailed the bill's problems, including lack of due process, near certainty of over-blocking and abuse, imposition of excessive liability on Internet intermediaries, global legitimization of DNS censorship and potential fragmentation of the Internet, among other things. It is considered even worse than its evil fraternal twin in the Senate, the PROTECT IP Act which is also opposed by many tech companies and non-profit groups. Despite such opposition, the bill draws relatively broad support from lawmakers.

Net Neutrality: South African technology journalist Jan Vermeulen ran the M-Lab's Glasnost Test on South African ISP's to see whether their stated bandwith shaping policies match up with reality.

The growth of bandwidth intensive internet applications in South Korea has made Net Neutrality an important issue there. South Korean ISP's are reporting that it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain neutral practices with content. The three largest telecommunications companies in Korea are worried by the rise of Smart TV's, which use Internet connections as opposed to traditional cable or satellite links to provide content. The ISP's want to charge companies varying amounts depending on the type and amount of content sent.

Internet Governance: ICANN held its 42nd public meeting in Dakar, Senegal late last month. Wendy Seltzer reported here on GVA why the seemingly arcane debates about domain name registrar accreditation is important. Konstantinos Komaitis, an active member of ICANN's Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group (Global Voices is also a member), describes the struggle that is taking place took place between governments and other ICANN stakeholders over whether some stakeholders are more equal than others within ICANN's multi-stakeholder governance model. Kieren McCarthy at dotNext also has an in-depth report and analysis on the clash between governments and registrars over law enforcement regarding domain names. Over at the Internet Governance Project Milton Mueller takes an in-depth look at the politics surrounding the Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group and related constituencies, and the fight for civil society representation at ICANN.

India has published a formal proposal to put the UN in charge of overseeing Internet governance. For different analyses by three Internet governance wonks see Kieren McCarthy, Milton Mueller, and Jeremy Malcolm.

The International Telecommunications Union has approved a new protocol for relaying biometric information. The protocol is intended to enable doctors to communicate data about patients safely and is geared towards developing countries where the access to medical care in rural areas is poor and communication between clinics and doctors would provide better patient care. You can read the full press release here.

Netizen Power: Lee Yoo Eun at Global Voices reports that the October 26th Seoul mayoral election was swayed by the use of twitter. Read the full article here.

African entrepreneur Herman Chinery-Hesse gave a speech at the Tech 4 Africa conference highlighting what the rise of Internet Communication Technologies has done for Africa. A synopsis of his talk can be found on the Tech4Africa.

Sovereigns of Cyberspace: Facebook has introduced a new “guardian angel” feature to help users restore locked accounts.

The 13th Austrian Big Brother Awards were held on October 25th in Vienna. “Winners” included the CEO of Telekom Austria, the Ministers of Interior and Justice, and the head of the anti-terror police unit. Mark Zuckerberg received the “lifelong menace” award and a “Defender of Liberty” award went to the creators of the “Europe versus Facebook” campaign.

The Silicon Valley Human Rights Conference was held in San Francisco in late October (see GVA's report, Jillian York's report, and The Economist's) and released the Silicon Valley Standard, a set of 15 principles that technology companies should follow in order to protect human rights.

China's Weibo plans to launch an English version in partnership with Flipboard and Instagram. Will they agree to follow the Silicon Valley Standard?

Security Alert: The security researcher Barnaby Jack has found it possible to conduct a blind attack on insulin pumps. While there have been no reports of anyone being harmed by such an attack, this highlights how far behind security technologies are when it comes to wireless devices that are embedded in critical infrastructure and medicine.

Publications: Digital Cameras Reduce Electoral Corruption by Michael Callen and James Long.

Events: Check out this handy calendar of Internet-related events around the world, courtesy of Internews!

Access Contested: Security, Identity, and Resistance in Asian Cyberspace, by the OpenNet Initiative, to be officially released in December. Part I of the book (including a chapter by yours truly) can be read online or downloaded here.

Note: This report was compiled with considerable help from Ted Eby and Weiping Li.

Read the original article here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/netizen-report

Once Upon A Flash

nishant — 2012-12-14T10:23:52Z

It was a dark and stormy evening. A young man in a dark blue Adidas jacket, collar turned up, eyes under green-black shades, hopped off a motorbike, tucked his thumbs into the front pockets of his low-slung retro jeans and surreptitiously made his way through a road thronging with rush-hour traffic and irate pedestrians yelping on their cellphones. He skipped across death traps with skilled ease: leaping over potholes, jumping over halfdug trenches, avoiding the occasional pair of doggy jaws that longed to mate with his ankles, ignoring the bikers who were using the pavements as new lanes for driving towards a honking traffic jam bathed in an orange and red neon that made the road look like a piece of burnt toast with dollops of vicious jam on it.

After five minutes of brisk walking, he slowed down as if he had reached just where he wanted to be – nowhere in particular. On his left were the large Acropolis buildings, towering over the world from their gated existence, structured in pompous Greek columns and facades of granite, stone and marble. On his right, on the other side of the road, if you looked over the metal head of the traffic, you could see the small roadside restaurant that announced fresh fish at cheap rates, sitting cosily under a starved-looking tree, happily encroaching upon the pavement, forcing the pedestrians to disembark, navigate the traffic and then come back to the relative safety of the footpath.

Caught between these two ironies, he stayed put for a while, glancing at his chor bazaar Rado model that flashed on his left wrist. He headed towards the mall that rose in glass and neon, false curves and studious lines across the quickly staining sky of a Saturday evening. As he walked into the mall, the automatic doors that sensed his corporeal presence opened up for him and the girl in a polka-dotted blue-and-red dress threw him the smile that desk attendants save for strangers. The gush of cold airconditioned air and the noises of window shoppers greeted him to ease; mannequins in windows, draped in the latest fashions and various states of undress, winked at him; the smell of freshly brewed coffee came and enveloped him. He headed with ungrim determination towards the round performance area in the mall centre. Like many other hangers-out he too loitered without apparent intent around it, just another boy out on a Saturday evening.

Suddenly his cell phone buzzed. His alarm sounded in loud tones to blend with the Britney Spears playing on the mall sound system. He fished out a bright bumblebee-yellow bandana and tied it to his head. As he did that, the performance area turned into a sea of people wearing varied shades of yellow, blasting their cell phone alarms at full volume till all you could hear was a grating disharmony that would have caused comment on a railway station in India. The phones soon faded and a group of about 70 people formed a human ring, holding hands, their heads swathed in yellow, and sang at the top of their voices the first two stanzas of Hum Honge Kamyaab – the Hindi rendering of the famous song We Shall Overcome. Once the song sank into a bewildered silence, the people in yellow bandanas fell on their knees, raised their hands towards heaven and roared with laughter before quickly pulling off their headgear and dispersing, leaving an empty space and a gawking audience who just had their first dose of a ‘flashmob’ – a group of people who assemble together, suddenly, in a public place, perform an unexpected sets of choreographed actions and disperse without as much as a by your leave or with your leave.

Flashmobs trace their history to the early 18th century industrialisation, when a group of women working in the labour shops[1]in Australia used coded messages to meet and discuss the problems they had in their workplaces. These meetings were organised at random, and the women used the very technologies of production that they engaged with at work on a daily basis to fight the oppression and the injustice of the people at the top. The first modern flashmob, however, is attributed to Bill Wasik, editor of Harper’s Magazine, who, after the first failed attempt (May, 2003), managed to pull a successful flashmob where 200 people swarmed over the mezzanine floor of the Manhattan departmental store Macy’s, pretending to buy a ‘love rug’ for their commune where they supposedly all lived together; they left a bewildered audience and a bemused store staff behind them (3rd June, 2003).

Organise, congregate, act, disperse – that is the anatomy of a flash mob. A polymorphous set of people are brought together through the commonality of subscribing to similar technological interfaces or gadgetry. Random e-mails, short messages (sms) on cell phones, discrete messages embedded in public works of art or media, blogs and wikis have now been successfully used to conjure these tenuous group formations that temporarily transform the space that they arrive at – flash sites – into something that neither the audience they perform to nor the state can comprehend, thus producing that space in a condition of social and physical illegality.

In The Name of Fun

One of the most overarching icons of a globalised economy has been the credit card – virtual money that has changed the way we think of money, capital and transactions. Visa Power, as the advertisement goes, is looked upon as the quintessential rhetoric of economic globalisation, where the power to change and to create is manifested through the processes of consumption. While technology has been heavily implicated in the creation of this new invisible money, it has remained on the background. The swiping of the card – the physical act of buying without ‘paying’ has become such a naturalised event that the technology it adopts or the networks it creates are not very visible... Flash mobs, in their construction, execution and ramifications, foreground technology as one of the most powerful tools of creating new formations of grouping and networking that, through their deliberately devised unintelligibility, transform the spaces they occupy.

This is the story of the first flashmob in India, and how it can be understood through the tropes of illegality, enchantment and transformation. The story starts a little before the flashmob itself. In the year 2000, a shopping mall in Mumbai created a furore amongst the public. It was the first ‘genuine’ shopping mall in India. The first space that claimed mallhood was in Bangalore – Kemp Fort, but it was more a large shopping store rather than a mall. This first all American shopping mall – Crossroads, with its promises of unlimited pleasure and brand-tagged shopping – attracted the largest crowd in its opening week. Everybody wanted to see what the mall was like. Everybody was curious about this space. Everybody wanted to be a part of this exclusive zone that clearly demonstrated that modernity and progress had finally come to us. Then everybody found out that they were not allowed to enter the mall. As the director of the mall pointed out in his interview with The Times of India, (23rd August, 2000), “Crossroads is not meant for everybody".

In those days when cell phones were still a novelty and definitely a curio for the upper classes, and when pagers were still struggling for a mass market, Crossroads passed a stipulation which restricted people not carrying a cell phone or a credit card from entering the mall. If you were still eager to enter the space, you paid extra fees of Rs 50 per head and thus made amends for not carrying a cell phone or a credit card. This was the first time a ‘public’ space made it very clear that the public it was looking for and attempting to effectively create was not “everybody”. The issue was talked about, shouted about, screamed at and criticised by all wings of the media, who passionately analysed this instance of discriminatory practices based on socioeconomics. Later, a PIL (Public Interest Litigation) was filed against the mall; it lost, and had to throw its doors open to “everybody” who had been clamouring to get in ever since they found out they were not allowed to enter.

On 4 October 2003, the mall again came into limelight in a manner it had not accounted for. This time it was initiated by an e-mail. About 5,000 original mailers went off to people all around Mumbai and even beyond the city, asking them to have a look at a new blog for Mumbai flashmobs. The blog posted a form asking for name, e-mail address and mobile number. On 3 October several cell phones rang, asking people who had submitted their details in the form to check their inboxes. The eager participants glided to their accounts to find a mail that agonisingly chalked out the time and space of the meeting venue – a flash site. The information was also sent by sms to all members who had volunteered. And then at exactly 5 pm a group of about a hundred participants entered Crossroads. They screamed at the top of their voices and sold imaginary shares belonging to Reliance India. They performed the garba. In the middle of dancing they all froze. And then without so much as a word, after two minutes of historic histrionics, they opened their umbrellas and dispersed, leaving a trail of bewilderment and confusion, as an audience of over a thousand watched with their jaws on the floor.

This was India’s first recorded flashmob. A large crowd of people who did not know each other, did not have any largely political purpose in mind and did not really intend to extend the flashmob contact into relationships, got together to perform a set of ridiculous actions at Crossroads, thus marking it as the first flash site in India. Ironically, the group that converted the mall into mayhem consisted of whom Anne Balsamo calls the hyperreal people – people whose identities are created by the hypervisual and extra physical aesthetics of the digital technologies that they deploy - who were once the only legitimate owners of the space of that mall. This first flashmob sparked off many others all around the nation – most of them marking out spaces such as multiplexes, shopping malls, gaming parlours, body shops, large commercial roads and shopping complexes as their flashsite.

Bill Wasik, the creator of the first flashmob in Manhattan, in a recent interview,[2] looked upon the flashmob experiment as a study in behavioural psychology of people he called “hipsters” – people who would join ‘new’ or ‘cool’ things for no reason or investment but to be visible in the new trends and social fads. To a large extent, Wasik’s surface analysis seems to hold true. While flashmobs have been used as a political weapon by several groups and activists in many areas of human rights, queer rights, feminism, political democracy, etc., flashmobs fundamentally exist, like pre-Raphaelite art, for a solipsist reason. Bijoy Venugopal, who produced one of the most celebrated accounts of the Crossroads flashmob[3], mentions how it was all about having some “serious fun”. Increasingly, the flashmob organisers in and around the country have disavowed any ideological moorings for the gathering, and forcibly shelve it into the realms of entertainment or leisure. Following the banning of flashmobs in cities like Mumbai and Bangalore (Mid-day, 9th oct. 2003), even though they have invoked the right to freedom of speech and expression, the organisers and the participants have largely produced justifications by claiming to have no political agenda or inclinations in the construction or execution of flashmobs.

In this repeated disavowal of the political, one can read the desire for re-enchantment that flashmobs and mobsters bring with them. Flashsites, defined by the organising of the flashmobs, are usually sites of globalised consumption – an enchanted world of brand names and designer lifestyles that can make you feel as perpetually disoriented as Alice in Wonderland. These sites serve as the symbols of enchantment in the logic of the city.[4] The new urban enchantment and mode of fantasy is located in the circuits of consumerism where, with plastic money and unlimited credit, the consuming citizen can buy all that the heart desires. However, flashmobs, outside these networks of consumption, and constituted by the same people who fit the bill of the citizen as imagined and promoted by the state and the market as they embrace globalisation and its technologies, demand a re-enchantment of the city. They force us to acknowledge the need for such public spaces to be accessible to all, and provide a strong critique of the easily accepted globalised dream in which the state is so heavily investing. Flashmobs become a manifestation of how tenuously networked, fragile communities, their collaboration inspired and enabled by cyberspatial technologies, can contest the very forces that promote and proliferate these technologies. Flashmobs become a site upon which the drama of globalisation, consumption, state and space is discursively and recursively enacted.

In The Name of The Law

That flashmobs are in a condition of illegality is perhaps one of the easiest claims to prove. The very fact that the Mumbai Police, after the first series of flashmobs, invoked Section 37(1) of the Bombay Police Act in the name of security and safety, clearly states how flashmobs are considered outside the law in the most literal sense of the word. The then Mumbai Police Deputy Commissioner of Police, Amitabh Gupta, contacted Rohit Tikmany, organiser of the first flashmob and moderator of the flashmob blogging community (http://www.mumbaimobs.org/), asking him to shut down the site and stop all further attempts at organising flashmobs. Following the ban in Mumbai, cities such as Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Delhi have enacted similar bans within the city limits. These censoring forces look at flashmobs as potentially destabilising elements that can be ‘misused’ for violent acts such as riots and bombings by fundamentalist organisations.

However, of greater interest is the way in which flashmobs manage to reproduce flashsites in conditions of social and physical illegality by creative deliberate structures of transient unintelligibility. The leisure infrastructure of malls and multiplexes, cafes and large shopping complexes, gaming zones and commercial roads of consumption, are all aimed at the new citizenry that comes into being with these new urban economies falling into place. These spaces are not only legitimate spaces of self-expression through consumption, but also authorised spaces of public assembly and gathering. They promote an ethos of incessant consumption where the individual is also installed as a consumable product that relates to others in the processes of consumption. They are the locations where brands, accessories and lifestyles all come together as the figureheads of a sanitised economy which strives to make opaque the surrounding subcultures of piracy, theft, copying and distributing that emerge around such nodal points.[5] To belong to the space of a mall or a shopping complex, one needs to almost automatically endorse the original, the authentic, the expensive, as a way of making a conscious statement of style and lifestyle. These potential flashsites become the spaces that the state legitimises as the most visible and sanitised form of urbanisation in contemporary cities.

However, flashmobs definitely subvert the sanctity or the sanity of such spaces by compelling them to suddenly introject disruptive conditions of unintelligibility. Flashmobs force the other participants of the space to enter into a narrative of confusion and chaos; of turbulence, thus rendering the space of consumption incomprehensible for the short time that the flashmob unfolds. Moreover, flashmobs do not fall under globalisation’s rhetoric of consumption, and do not require any special access powers or consumption rites, thus defying the discriminatory protocols that such spaces put in motion under the uneasily hovering sign “Rights of Admission Reserved”. Flashmobs, by rejecting the very use and expectation of the space, in spite of the heavy surveillance, state opposition and hi-tech policing, are able to distort the formulaic narratives of the space, thus creating alternative structures of resistance, of transformation, of transition. State apparatus gets completely paralysed when faced with such a radical reconfiguring, and thus goes out of its way to put a special ban upon flashmobs in a city where even a small defeat in a cricket match, or various emotional events such a public mourning or celebration, bring together crowds much louder, more aggressive, tenuous and destructive than conventional flashmobs. The transient illegality that flashmobs produce is not only at the level of the law but also at the level of legibility and comprehension.

"What do the mobsters do when they come together for a flashmob?" is a wrong question to ask. While the actions of the mobsters might be bizarre and lacking in meaning, often uninformed by any obvious ideology, flashmobs do produce new modes of signification and networking patterns, unprecedented in modern history. The ephemeral nature of the flashmobs, the improbably pseudonymous identities of the participants, the technologically mediated communication and networking patterns, all hint towards a certain notion of technosociality, where the social world around us is profoundly affected by the technologies that we adopt. In these unexpected eruptions, flashmobs create a new relationship between actors, audience and the spaces that they inhabit, including all the three into the circuits of digital technologies. As a form of radical localised performance, flashmobs offer a way to question the hierarchical intentionality of the spaces that they transform; they embody new ways in which technologies interface with our daily life, producing new forms of technosocial living.

This paper was published in Academia.edu. Click here to read the original. Download the file here. [PDF, 129 kb]

[1].These were probably the precedents to the modern day sweat shops that have characterized Globalisation in the 21st century. The ‘labour shops’ were large stone and concrete buildings which housed workers working around the clock towards incessant production. Women and children were often preferred because they were given lesser wages than men and considered more easily malleable.

[2].The transcript of the interview is available at http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/37/features-bemis.php

[3].Venugopal, himself a prolific blogger, blogged about the flashmobs at http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/37/features-bemis.php http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/37/features-bemis.php

[4]. Po Bronson, in his spectacular analysis of the Silicon Valley in The Nudist on the Late Shift, talks about how in a post-industrial city, the quantifiable icons of enchantment and progress – large factories, smoke spewing chimneys and huge barricaded stone and iron constructions have given way to small and homelike offices which are almost human and hence negligible. In his search for the new symbols of enchantment, Bronson conjures the figure of the nudist on the late shift – an eccentric double billionaire who works and lives in a cubicle and rides on the crest of the IT boom. In the case of third world countries like India, these symbols might well be these new sites of consumption that have come with globalization.

[5].One of the more exciting facets of digital technologies and globalization has been the debate over property, ownership and theft. Easy duplication of brands and bypassing the traditional circuits of distribution or sale of property have created the glorified figure of the pirate who straddles the worlds of the legal and the illegal, the digital and the physical, the ephemeral and the tactical with great ease. Within the sanctuarised spaces of malls and shopping complexes, these referents to the other world of cheap duplicates and mobile consumables hang uneasily. There is a constant attempt at establishing the original and the legitimate over the fake or copied replicas which are available in the grey markets that emerge around them.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/once-a-flash