We are anonymous, we are legion

India’s vanishing fingerprints put UID in question

praskrishna — 2011-10-26T10:05:13Z

A curious situation has come to light at the UID (unique identity) enrolment centres. Call it the phenomenon of vanishing fingerprints. You see, our unique fingerprints don’t necessarily last a lifetime and they can be damaged or destroyed and, in some cases, even non-existent. And that is not the best scenario for the first-of-its-kind project that endeavours to create a unique identity for India’s billion-plus population based on fingerprints and iris scans (or biometric data).

To find out more, Firstpost visited five UID centres in the North West district, which incidentally has the highest enrolments (619,571 and counting) among Delhi’s nine districts since the show hit the road in February 2011, and one centre in North Delhi.

The officials at the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will tell you that there is no overemphasising the importance of the quality of biometric data to the success of the super ambitious UID, now known as Aadhar project. If the quality of a person’s biometric data is poor, it automatically compromises the authentication of that data by him when he wants to access a service based on his UID.

So what happens when the data – fingerprints, for instance – are inherently unreliable on account of various biological and socio-economic reasons, some of which are especially relevant to the Indian context.

The UIDAI’s Committee on Biometrics in a December 2009 was rather forthright about its reservations on the fingerprint reliability. Titled Biometrics Design Standards For UID Applications (page 4, para 4), it stated, "….two factors however, raise uncertainty about the accuracy that can be achieved through fingerprints. First, retaining efficacy while scaling the database size from fifty million to a billion has not been adequately analysed. Second, fingerprint quality, the most important variable for determining de-duplication accuracy, has not been studied in depth in the Indian context." (Emphasis added).

The findings on the ground were revelatory. Operators and technical experts at the UID enrolment centres confirmed to Firstpost that they routinely came across cases where fingerprints had been damaged/destroyed/underdeveloped. And such cases, they said, were more common among senior citizens, those involved in manual labour (who handle rough objects, for instance) and children (mostly below 10 years of age).

Here is an example that Firstpost observed.

Batuli, 72, arrived at around noon at the Basti Vikas Kendra, now also a UID centre, in Mangol Puri to get herself a ‘smart card’ everyone has been talking about. (The 'Aadhar' brand name hasn’t caught on in these parts of Delhi, with everyone insisting on calling it the 'smart card'.)

The helpful operator with the fancy gadgets helps Batuli to her seat. After her photo is taken, Batuli is asked to place four fingers — one hand at a time — on a green-lit device. Right hand, then left hand.

She is, however, asked to repeat the exercise a second time for the left hand. The operator explains. "In some case, we have to scan the fingerprints and Iris multiple times. If it doesn’t pass the required quality percentage of 70 per cent (the quality is indicated in percentage terms on the computer screen that is connected to the fingerprint machine, see pic), we repeat the exercise up to four times."

Batuli’s hands are then wiped using a cloth and placed back on the device. The exercise is repeated a fourth and final time. But still the same result. 'Fail', declares the reading on the operator’s computer.

An operator at the next station, says, "In the case of senior citizens, Iris scans also sometime fail. It registers weakly when the retina is damaged."

(Enrolment centres are run by private companies on contracts given by registrars chosen by the UIDAI. Strategic Outsourcing is one such company and it runs many of centres in the North West and South West districts of Delhi.)

The project coordinator of the UID enrolment centre working out of the Destitute Welfare Trust, an NGO in Sultanpuri, too, confirmed that he was aware of the problem of damaged fingerprints and the challenge it posed in getting good quality fingerprint data.

"The hands of children are very soft and in some cases fingerprints are not yet fully developed. Also, children tend to have sweaty hands and this can interfere with the quality of fingerprints. Extremely dry hands also pose problems. We have to often, wipe the hands or provide lotion to improve the quality of fingerprints," said a technical expert working with Strategic Outsourcing.

While the number of attempts, as prescribed by the UIDAI, to get a stronger finger print when the result reads 'fail' is four, operators report that sometimes attempts go up to 10 to 15. (The machine picks up the strongest impression of the attempts made). They say they didn’t anticipate such a problem and it was only when they started enrolments in January that they were confronted with such a scenario. “Now, of course, everybody knows about it."

'Everybody' implies those who are directly involved in collecting biometric data. An operator from another private company Smartchip working in a JJ (slum) colony in the North Delhi district of Model town, revealed similar problems on being probed. "A fingerprint strength of 70 percent or more is pass. About 10 per cent of the cases we get every day register the 'fail' reading. What can we do? In the case of stone cutters, for instance, the fingers are completely smooth, the fingerprints are completely wiped out."

So what are the implications of poor quality fingerprints for the UID project? The UIDAI admitted that it could provide challenges to authentication.

In an email response to Firstpost, Sujata Chaturvedi, UIDAI’s Deputy Director General for the Delhi region said, "It could provide some challenges in de-duplication although that has been mitigated to a large extent by the decision of the UIDAI to go in for iris an additional de-duplication factor… Also to be noted is the fact that normally not all fingers are equally de-graded. So UIDAI is evolving a protocol to inform the residents about their good quality fingerprints as part of the Aadhaar letter so that they are aware of the finger to use for authentication."

But not everyone is convinced. Sunil Abraham is the executive director of Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), which has written seven open letters to the Standing Committee on the Finance Branch (before which is the National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010) asking the committee to consider their research on the UID project and change aspects of the Bill and the project.

The seventh letter sent last week, says Abraham, provides statistical analysis that demonstrates how the UID will never be able to create a unique database.

"In CIS’s seventh open letter to the finance committee, statistical analysis reveals that UIDAI tender specification is 1,000 times less accurate than it should be to have a reasonable chance of building a truly unique database. This analysis depends on high quality biometrics. With poor biometric quality the problem of de-duplication is compounded."

When UIDAI was asked what the percentage of the population enrolled (all India and Delhi) had recorded below-standard fingerprint quality, no specific data was forthcoming.

Chaturvedi wrote, "Currently the population with very poor quality fingerprints is a very small percentage. It must also be remembered that this population is scattered all over the country."

In India, even a small percentage translates to millions of people. "Small percentage could mean absolutely anything. Why can’t they be more specific? One percent in the Indian context is 12 million people," said Abraham.

On how the UIDAI was dealing with challenge of poor fingerprint quality, Chaturvedi said, "Even amongst the populace that has damaged/destroyed/underdeveloped fingerprints, chances are very high that they would have at least one good fingerprint that could be used for authentication. Second, UIDAI is also starting to actively develop iris authentication ecosystem. Fingerprint authentication and iris authentication could supplement each other to ensure a universal coverage."

She added that Aadhaar authentication will supplement and work in conjunction with existing authentication systems to strengthen the overall authentication rather than replace completely the existing authentication systems.

That begs the question, as Abraham puts it, "If the UIDAI is not going to replace existing forms of authentication it is not clear why the government is spending all this money on unproven biometric technology."

Chaturvedi, however, maintained that the initial PoC (proof of concept) study that was taken up in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Jharkhand collected about 60,000 enrolments indicated that the biometric accuracy levels necessary for de-duplication of all residents of India are achievable.

"The PoC results also indicated the time needed for capture of biometrics in typical rural conditions is small enough to support large scale enrolment. Over and above the initial PoC, the UIDAI has currently completed over 5 crore enrolments for which Aadhaars have been generated. This experience reinforces the initial PoC results that the de-duplication accuracy is sufficient and sustainable to enrol the rest of the population."

The original article is written by Pallavi Polanki. It was published in Firstpost on October 24, 2011 and can be read here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/vanishing-fingerprints-put-uid-in-question

Privacy & Sexual Minorities

Danish Sheikh — 2013-09-20T09:22:44Z

Danish Sheikh examines the status of sexual minorities in the light of privacy framework in India. Culling out some real life examples based on various studies, media reports and judgments from the Supreme Court and the High Courts of Delhi and Allahabad, the research brings to light the privacy violations being committed by both individuals as well as state authorities. The research concludes by saying that privacy doesn’t necessarily encompass a one-size-fits-all approach, and can raise as many questions as it answers.

Defining Privacy

In examining the status of sexual minorities vis-à-vis the privacy framework in India, this research takes into account a definition of privacy that encompasses protection against physical interference with a person and their property as well as the state of being free from intrusion in one’s private life or affairs.[1] This involves an understanding of privacy violations being committed by both an individual as well as the State. On the one hand is the extent to which a private individual is entitled to personal information about another individual and on the other is the extent to which government authorities can intrude into the private life of a citizen to keep watch over his or her movements or exercise control over personal choices.[2]

No mention of sexuality and privacy in India can stand without a nod to Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). In 1860, with the institution of the IPC by Lord Macaulay, section 377 criminalized homosexuality by putting forth that, "carnal intercourse against the order of nature"[3] was to be punishable by law. While this archaic law stands even today, it was read down significantly in a landmark Delhi High Court judgment in 2009[4] which will be referred to later. As stated in an open letter by Vikram Seth and a host of others and endorsed by Amartya Sen, the law has been used to "systematically arrest, prosecute, terrorize and blackmail sexual minorities. It has spawned public intolerance and abuse, forcing tens of millions of gay and bisexual men and women to live in fear and secrecy at tragic cost to themselves and their families."[5] When understood in its conception as non-interference by the State, as the right to be left alone,[6] privacy isn’t necessarily an empowering right for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons. For one, the claim to privacy when it comes to same-sex acts tends to get construed as a claim for secrecy: it is to carry out purportedly "clandestine" acts that the sexual minority community wants refuge from the State. The same strategy can further backfire when claims for heightened scrutiny might in fact be requested, such as in discrimination actions.[7] A zonal understanding of privacy also subverts the fact that many instances of expression of identity happen in the public sphere.[8]

For a while, privacy jurisprudence hinged on this idea of privacy as a negative right by disallowing infringement of a person’s right to a private life by the State. This understanding may be located in an international regime which has for a while insisted on dividing civil and political rights at one side, and social and economic rights on the other. With this split, what was institutionalized was the idea that civil and political rights were as such "negative" rights, while social and economic rights were "positive" in their content. In effect, the presumption that stood was that while states needed to expand resources to uphold social and economic rights, no such correlative obligation required observance in respect of civil and political rights.[9] Recent human rights conventions such as the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities acknowledge the flaw in this understanding, based on the reasoning that both civil and political rights and social and economic rights give rise to positive and negative duties.[10] The Naz Foundation[11] judgment propels the understanding of privacy as a positive right. It’s easy enough to split the analysis in this study neatly with the judgment which, in the course of declaring unconstitutional the aforementioned IPC provision, discussed at length the right to privacy, exploring it as a function of dignity. To divide what the Delhi High Court said about the right into three parts — first, they discussed privacy as dealing with persons and not places,[12] implying that the right to privacy is not only a claim to space from state intervention but that it protects the autonomy of the private will and a person’s freedom of choice and action, second, they tied it in with dignity and connected it with the value and worth of all individuals,[13] and third, they talked of the right to privacy as being based on one’s autonomous identity. In the context of privacy, this means that it is "the inner sanctum of the person such as his/her family life, sexual preference and home environment which is shielded from erosion by conflicting rights of the community."

While there will be a bit of a before-Naz/after-Naz tint to the analysis, it is important to appreciate that the nature of privacy discourse when it comes to sexual minorities remains somewhat murky even after the grand affirmation that the judgment provided. A large part of this of course is concerned with society struggling to catch up with the developments in the law.

Before moving on to the next chapter, I’ll unpack the term "sexual minority" to delineate the different communities that will feature in the course of this paper, whilst also attempting to renegotiate the idea of privacy contextually. Using Arvind Narrain’s seminal monograph Queer as a template,[14] the term gay will be employed to describe a man who is attracted to another man emotionally, sexually or physically; a lesbian woman is attracted to women emotionally, sexually or romantically; while someone who is bisexual maintains that attraction towards members of both sexes. A transgender person assumes the gender identity of the opposite sex; within Indian discourse they are called as hijras, constituted of a transgender person who is biologically male and takes on the gender role of a female. The hijra community in India maintains a unique form of social organization within its parallel society. We then have the term "eunuch", used in a more derogatory fashion, which medically refers to a castrated male, and is sometimes employed in India to refer to the hijras. Another South Asian constructed identity is that of the kothi — a male homosexual who is feminized and takes a passive/receptive role in sex.

The next section of this study will look at a string of privacy concerns of sexual minorities in India as sourced from various studies and media reports. The analysis pauses at the interplay of rights surrounding the transgender community in particular: how do issues of recognition of their particular category impact members of the community? The subsequent section jumps past the timeline of the Naz Foundation judgment to understand the kind of changes – if at all – that the high court’s words have effected when it comes to this idea of privacy.

Privacy Rights and Wrongs

The incidents highlighted in this chapter took place before the Delhi High Court altered the way we conceived of queer rights in general and privacy in particular. Two issues permeate this analysis: one, the notion of criminality hovering above queer identity, and two, the somewhat one-dimensional idea of privacy that existed then. A third, more complex issue in the context of the hijra community becomes the idea that one conception of privacy may not always be the most empowering for a community, and the subsequent negotiations that have to be made in that sphere.

Entrapment: The Lucknow Incidents

In July of 2001, a set of raids: first on a public park frequented by the men who have sex with men (MSM)[15] community, and next on the offices of two NGOs working on safe sex issues led to the arrests of ten people. The operation was conducted on the basis of an FIR filed with a Lucknow police station wherein it was alleged that a certain Suresh had sodomized the complainant. Notable in the incident was the climate of homophobia stoked by the media which indulged in sensationalizing headlines,[16] with the magistrate concerned further refusing bail to the men. In denial of bail, instead of siding with the relevant law, the magistrate clearly proceeded on the basis of his perceptions regarding homosexuality: "they…are polluting the entire society by encouraging the young persons and abetting them for committing the offence of sodomy."[17]

If we were to extend the Supreme Court’s reasoning in the catena of surveillance cases vis-a-vis privacy starting from Kharak Singh v. State of U.P., [18] it is clear that the NGO members’ right to privacy was violated by the way of unwarranted search and seizure operations carried out by the police. As the court said in Govind v. State of M.P.,[19] domiciliary visits and picketing by the police should be reduced to the clearest cases of danger to community security. While the judges were referring to matters relating to follow-up from a conviction/release from prison, it seems evident that a higher standard should be given to cases where such prior conviction itself hasn’t taken place.

As for the accused, Narrain notes how the response of the State and media ended up harming them, regardless of the final judicial decision. [20] The public hearings meant that in Lucknow, their sexual identities became public, with a definite impact on their future prospects and present perceptions. The question, as Narrain poses, is the issue of the suitability of the courts to protect the rights of people who are still in the closet. If approaching the courts means compulsory 'outing' with all its attendant negative outcomes, how does one articulate the rights of such a minority?[21]

There are thus three major facets of privacy violation here: the police’s lawlessness resulting in the primary intrusion; the media’s sensationalization which harshly exposed the accused to the public glare; and finally, the magistrate’s bias which legitimized these privacy violations.

Yet another set of arrests took place in the city, this time in 2006, with the police in Lucknow arresting four men under section 377 for allegedly having sex in a public park. News reports revealed pictures of all the four men with their names and home addresses.[22]

The first information report (FIR) here contradicted the investigation of a fact finding team of activists and lawyers: it emerged that none of the men were actually involved having public sex, with the story by the police being a completely fabricated one. It turned out that one of the men had been arrested by the police on their knowledge about his homosexuality, following which his contacts were tapped to stage an entrapment of the other three men.[23]

This notion of raiding homosexual gatherings was taken to its extreme by a police raid on a gay party in the outskirts of Mumbai in 2008, in the course of which six persons were detained. "…. neither was he able to give a satisfactory explanation for organizing the party," said the API on questioning the event organizer.[24]

In these instances of interplay between criminal procedure, media ethics and judicial process, it is worth questioning whether general reforms in those areas will positively affect privacy rights of sexual minorities in particular. Unwarranted searches and arrests are barely an uncommon occurrence in the country, neither is the fact of accounts of people’s sexual behaviour finding themselves very publicly outed in the media, and nor, again, are accounts of judges overlooking police excesses rare. It’s a bit difficult to make an exact value judgment over what kinds of privacy violations is more damning, in a society that takes its sexual mores quite seriously, be they with regard to hetero or homosexual sex. More than anything though, that just makes the need for across the board reforms in these areas more urgent, and sharpens the kind of alliances across communities that would be required to effect change. Of course, this kind of advocacy can only happen in an atmosphere where homosexuality continues to be decriminalized – the fate of the Naz Foundation appeal before the Supreme Court is of paramount importance.

Gender Identity and Transgender Issues

A survey of the situation regarding the transgender community in India throws up a fascinating picture of instances where seemingly positive sounding regulation doesn't always serve its intended effects – when such "positive sounding" regulation does happen at all. To start with, there is the question of the status of the transgender community in India itself – a PUCL report[25] notably documented, and numerous reports and articles[26] have affirmed, the reality of the transgender community today as one of harassment, abuse, and sexual violence. These accounts reveal a deep-rooted fear inculcated by mainstream society of sexual and gender non-conformity, which manifests itself in the refusal of basic citizenship rights to these communities.

The PUCL report gives a detailed account of harassment by the police in public places, at home, in police stations, and instances of entrapment similar to the Lucknow cases. Instead of reiterating that aspect which would simply involve repeating the above analysis, this section will look into other gender-specific issues that arise with respect to the community and the multiple questions these give rise to:

Transgender Toilets

The first example relates to efforts by the Chennai Municipal Corporation to build toilets specifically for the transgender population,[27] in a move stated as being part of a pilot project to recognize the considerable community in South and Central Chennai. Each lavatory in these toilets was to contain male, as well as female urinals. In the words of the municipal commissioner, the scheme was aimed at "extending recognition to the community and mainstreaming them", and more facilities could be built if the public responded well to the idea.

The reaction from the community was mixed at best: sure, it was regarded as a positive move to the extent that not every person who identified themselves as transgender had undergone sex change; simultaneously, the city saw one section of the community fearing the move as a step towards discrimination and isolation. "I don’t agree with this. We want to mingle with the mainstream. We don’t want to be separated like this," said Aasha Bharati, president of the Aravanigal Association. The idea of privacy here is at odds with something else the community is striving for: inclusion. The fear then was of one kind of recognition trumping another. What would a policy maker then privilege? Would this possibly be a better short-term move, as we move towards a future understanding of not being disabled by difference, or would the ideal of privacy trump even that?

The way this issue has played out in the Indian context stands in interesting contrast to cases in America. A bill in Maine which would allow restroom owners in business establishments and institutions from mandating what gender persons would use what washroom was met with sharp opposition from the transgender community on claims of dignity and privacy.[28] For a person who, say, externally had strongly masculine features, but identified as a woman, two options existed: either break the law and walk discreetly into the male compartment – or risk the outrage of other women as she walked into their compartment and was faced with their indignation of having a "man" use their toilet. In such an instance, there stand two rival conceptions of privacy: one in which respecting privacy would, somewhat ironically, stand as a transgender person’s right to assert their distinct identity in public without fear, versus a conception of privacy as anonymity – their right not to be compelled to make a political statement in the course of going about their daily lives.

Now that kind of issue wouldn’t come up in the Indian context for a large section of the transgender community simply owing to the hyper-visibility of the hijras. For all its contemporary stigmatization, the hijra community is a discernible one in public with an acknowledged history. Hijras have won elections in India, and are very much an acknowledged part of public space.[29] To that extent, privacy isn’t quite the overriding concern here in the way that it might be in the West – one might even say that the lack of such a conception can in this particular case be somewhat empowering.

Passport Forms

The next example concerns gender-sensitivity when it comes to passport forms.[30] The Ministry of External Affairs moved to allow for the option of entering a person's sex as "E" instead of either "M" or "F", the "E" then standing for "Eunuch". At the time of introduction of this category there was a degree of ambivalence: it was not available on the form itself, instead being listed as an option only in the rules. As activists noted however, it was a victory in the sense of being the first official recognition of the community. The particular category of recognition was problematic: for one the term "eunuch" would only reasonably represent one part of the transgender population; for another, large sections of the community would consider that term insulting. The government subsequently made an ameliorative measure by changing the category to "Other".[31] Again, the logical privacy question that would arise here would be regarding one's desire to be identified as transgendered in the first place. Similar to the toilets example, the issue would play out differently in India in many cases, given the hyper-visibility of the hijra community which provides an instant marker for a hijra, and subsequently ensures that there isn’t really a privacy violation when it comes to such kind of identification.

Of course, this declaration of otherness leads to issues for someone uncomfortable with disclosing transgender identity as such, and wanting to perform maleness or femaleness specifically. Would marking either the "M" or "F" column be considered an illegality?

Recognition – and Resolving Privacy

Where official recognition is clearly ameliorative, it doesn't always stay. Following years of struggle, the community was given recognition in Andhra Pradesh under the Minorities Welfare Department. It was short-lived, however: protests by religious minority groups forced the government to go back on its decision.[32] The kind of privacy violations that the hijra community suffers in India are thus in stark contrast to the kinds suffered by members of the gay and lesbian community: where one side deals with its invisibility, the other contends with the problems of its hyper-visibility. Hijras walk about as constant targets of police intrusion. A gay man or lesbian woman wouldn’t necessarily face those issues at the same level, except in instances where public sex is involved. The exceptions to even that are incidents of entrapment such as the Lucknow case, but it is evident that it is the hijra community which deals with such police action much more than the others. What is also uniquely empowering for the community is this very aspect of their identity, this ever-present identification. The kind of fears of disclosure and blackmail that someone who fears outing might face fizzle out in the case of the hijras.

The discourse gets complicated when you take up the identities of non-hijra transgendered persons: there are the female-to-male transgendered identities of Thirunambigal in Tamil Nadu, Magaraidu in Andhra Pradesh and Gandabasaka in Karnataka – as well as male to female identities such as the Jogappas in Northern Karnataka, and Jogathas in Andhra Pradesh.[33] The idea of hyper-visibility which is so crucial to locating a sense of empowerment for the hijra community in their lack of loss of privacy disappears here. The discussion here then springs back to the U.S. example of transgender toilets, and the complications that arise when external identity doesn’t necessarily match the internal one.

The Medical Establishment[34]

Relevant to this section of the study is the understanding of privacy under the ambit of autonomy. Referring to Naz Foundation, instead of using liberty to describe and support privacy as under Article 21 of the Constitution of India, the court refers to autonomy holding that "exercise of autonomy enables an individual to attain fulfillment, grow in self-esteem and form relationships of his or her choice and fulfill all legitimate goals that he/she may set."[35];

The medical establishment in India constantly undermines that autonomy by its treatment of homosexuality as a disease, and of LGBT persons as "others". LGBTs in India have often been detained in clinics against their will and subjected to treatment including shock therapy aimed at curing them.[36]

In 2001, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) admitted a complaint from a patient at the All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences, alleging psychiatric abuse at the hands of the consulting doctor, having been put on a four year course of drugs and told he had to be "cured" of his homosexuality. The NHRC finally chose to reject the complaint, with informal conversations with the chairman showing his belief that till section 377 was read down, nothing could be done. [37]

According to Vinay Chandran, Executive Director of the Swabhava Trust, medicine in India continues to be obsessed with curing homosexuality, with health professionals in many places still offering behavioural therapy including electric shock treatment as well as psychiatric drugs and hormones in order to "cure" patients of homosexual desire. Vinay reports that a couple of psychiatrists in Bangalore mentioned that there were possibilities of discovering which gene determines sexual preference and scientifically suppressing it.[38]

Of course quacks exist across the spectrum, and medicinal malpractice is barely limited to serving disastrous advice/ treatment to persons "afflicted" with homosexuality. For understanding how the debate moves beyond merely unqualified doctors, we have to factor in the category of ego-dystonic homosexuality, which is endorsed by the WHO. Here, the gender identity or sexual preference of the individual is not in doubt, but the individual wishes it were different and seeks treatment.[39]

The way a number of psychiatrists’ engage with the situation is summed up by the statement: "it’s not my job to tell him that it’s okay to be gay." No, the psychiatrist’s job it seems is to attempt to "cure" the oft-acknowledged incurable.

The fundamental factor not taken into account is that it is very often the environment that surrounds expression of homosexual identity that the patient is concerned about, as opposed to merely the idea of being LGBT. The relationship between patient and doctor is a fiduciary one, premised on absolute trust. In consulting a doctor, the patient entrusts fundamental decision making powers to the practitioner. The medical professional is often unable to comprehend the question of choice. This in turn results in effectively infringing the patient’s autonomy: the component of attaining fulfillment, the growth in self-esteem that the Delhi High Court elaborated on is robbed in the process of stifling sexuality, even when it is something the patient specifically requests the doctor for.

Lesbian Unions

Maya Sharma, in her book Loving Women locates the stories of a number of working-class lesbian women struggling to be with each other against the odds.[40] In a vein that parallels the reaction elicited to inter-religious or inter-caste marriages in a number of regions, it is often the honour of a family/village that is invoked in opposition to the demands of two people who want to be each other. One incident involves a woman who "dares" to elope with another being beaten and stripped, having her face blackened and being paraded around a village with a garland of shoes on her neck. Sahayatrika, a lesbian women's collective in Kerala has documented 24 cases of lesbian couple suicides in Kerala during the period between 1996 and 2004.[41] Earlier this year, two sets of lesbian couples committed suicide within a month of each – one in Sonarpur,.[42] and the other in Nandigram.[43]

Sexuality has often been used as a means for controlling women. The immoral/ tainted woman when placed in contrast with the idealized image of the model Indian woman is an image played out in various daily social interactions. In carrying out the agenda of control, the act of agency displayed by women who choose to step out of the heterosexual woodwork is a direct threat to that very system. The acts of family members in attempting to separate lesbian unions display a lack of respect for autonomy and for the private decisions of the women concerned. The feelings of fear, shame and isolation experienced by women who dare to explore their sexuality are compounded by instances of persecution by the family. The state is further complicit in numerous documented instances with the police often working with the family to track down the runaway brides and get them back home to familial watch under lock and key.

Privacy again battles with privacy in this realm: an oft-heard feminist critique of privacy hinges on the idea that privacy can be dangerous for women when it is used to cover up repression and physical harm to them by creation of the public/private divide.[44] The private realm is premised on non-intervention by the State. In this instance however, it is another aspect of privacy that needs to be valued, and one that even calls for state intervention: the aforementioned act of autonomy.

Privacy in the Time of Naz

The examples up until now have been coloured with a pre-Naz conception of privacy and queer rights – this chapter takes up two incidents post the judgment that captured the public imagination. First is the sting operation carried out on an Allahabad Muslim University professor that began a chain of events leading to his death; the second is an "expose" on the gay community carried by TV9. In both incidents, the "Spectre of Naz" [45] looms in the background, in many ways acting as an empowering, legitimizing force.

The Allahabad Muslim University Sting Operation

In February 2010, newspapers widely reported the story of Dr. Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras a 64 year-old Reader & Chairman, Department of Modern Indian Languages, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) being filmed having consensual sex with another adult male. When the video was made public, AMU suspended Siras for immoral sexual activity.[46] The implications of the suspension both in terms of the perception of homosexuality as immoral despite the judgment of the Delhi High Court as well as the disturbing nature of the occurrence of the filming of Dr. Siras in the privacy of his home prompted a nationwide outrage.[47]

On April 1 of the same year, the Allahabad High Court ordered AMU to reinstate Siras, holding that his right to privacy had been violated, stating "the right of privacy is a fundamental right, needs to be protected and that unless the conduct of a person, even if he is a teacher is going to affect and has substantial nexus with his employment, it may not be treated as misconduct."[48]

Then comes the news that Uttar Pradesh police had arrested two of those who broke into Siras’ house and filmed him. Many university officials were also charged with criminal offences. As Vinay Sitapati notes, none of this could have happened in a context where gay sex was illegal. In that context, it would have been Siras who was the criminal, and the additional wrongs done simply irrelevant – "this is not how the story was supposed to pan out. Those who broke into Siras’s house and AMU (and there are allegations that they are one and the same) assumed that Siras’s transgressions were so repellent, that their own would be forgiven." The judicial narrative — of a victimized Siras, a callous administration and criminal house-breakers — owes much to the Delhi High Court’s view that Siras’s sexual choice was legitimate.[49]

Going back to the understanding that the right to privacy is integrally linked to the notion of autonomy and the right to live with dignity ‒ it is this most fundamental of Constitutional safeguards that the AMU authorities clearly colluded in negating by being complicit in the sting operation and subsequently suspending Dr. Siras. A press release by the AMU authorities demonstrated a continuing disrespect for privacy: "the university respects the privacy of a teacher living in its premises but it also expects everyone to behave in a respectful manner giving due regard to its valued cultural ethos and the campus sensitivity including their neighbours concerns and to the great moral credentials that AMU has been nurturing since its inception."[50]

The TV9 “Expose”

In February of 2011, the news channel TV9 aired what it called an expose on the Hyderabad gay community titled "Gay Culture in Hyderabad". The video starts by worrying about how gay culture in Hyderabad is "increasing drastically". Following this, footage of a gay club is shown, without any attempt to blank out faces. The show then puts itself in the mode of investigative journalism, as TV9 sets itself the target of exposing the "truth" about gay culture in the city.

Next, viewers are informed about gay dating websites, with the anchor taking special care to inform viewers that it is software employees and students who mostly "fall prey" to this gay culture. Then, in an astonishingly blunt violation of privacy, pictures of men on one dating site are flashed on the screen, accompanied by conversations between the concerned man and a TV9 journalist soliciting sex. "While some do it for new pleasures, some get spoilt by friends, others do it for the crave of money and the remaining are vowed by the lust some of them have changed it into a business by capturing teenager's mind and get them into hell."

The video recording of the telecast on YouTube was taken off the site following a sustained protest from users of the site. Notices for legal action were sent to TV9 offices, including a detailed petition from Adhikaar, a Delhi based NGO. Two questions were primarily asked on LGBT mailing lists across the country[51]: first, regarding how safe establishing one’s homosexual identity online, or attending gay parties would be anymore, and secondly, whether a protest should take place, and what the nature of the same should be.

As highlighted by the petition drafted by Adhikaar, a Delhi-based NGO, this act of TV9 was violative of Code 6 of the News Broadcasters Association Code which deals with matters of privacy, and states:[52]

"As a rule channels must not intrude on private lives, or personal affairs of individuals, unless there is a clearly established larger and identifiable public interest for such a broadcast. The underlying principle that news channels abide by is that the intrusion of the private spaces, records, transcripts, telephone conversations and any other material will not be for salacious interest, but only when warranted in the public interest."

By way of entrapping a set of gay men through calling them and asking them pointed personal questions about their sexual lives, TV9 was further in violation of Code 9 (Self-Regulation Section) of the News Broadcasters Association which deals with sting operations and which states:[53]

"As a guiding principle, sting and undercover operations should be a last resort of news channels in an attempt to give the viewer comprehensive coverage of any news story. News channels will not allow sex and sleaze as a means to carry out sting operations, the use of narcotics and psychotropic substances or any act of violence, intimidation, or discrimination as a justifiable means in the recording of any sting operation."

A month later, the News Broadcasting Standards Authority, New Delhi censured TV9 and ordered it to pay a fine of Rs.1,00,000 and broadcast an apology in prime time both in English and in Telugu. The Authority determined that TV9 has violated the codes of ethics and broadcasting standards.[54]

Justice JS Verma called the story a sensationalized depiction of gay culture in Hyderabad and the story needlessly violated the privacy of individuals, with possible alternate sexual orientation. He also pointed out that alternate sexual orientation is no longer considered as a taboo or a criminal act. The channel was directed to run an apology for three consecutive days beginning the Monday next, in prime time with the following text:

"TV9 apologizes for the story “Gay Culture Rampant in Hyderabad” telecast on this channel on 22 February, 2011 from3.11 p.m. to 3.17 p.m. particularly since the story invaded the privacy of certain persons and was in violation of the Code of Ethics & Broadcasting Standards of the News Broadcasters Association. Any hurt or harm caused to any person thereby is sincerely regretted."

Again, it must be noted that the order of the NBSA would not have been possible in a context where gay sex was illegal: it is that very notion that allowed the Authority to move past the issue of homosexuality and instead delve into the merits of the actual harm done here.

Conclusion

It is possible to mount an argument that nothing has really changed post-Naz. The AMU’s attitude even in the face of the flak it received after the sting operation was phlegmatic at best: a summary statement saying that while it respected his privacy, it also expected a certain degree of behavior keeping in line with its "valued cultural ethos". Reactions like this threaten to lock the idea of privacy into a closed epistemic loop of judicial discourse: the courts might go hoarse extolling the significance of privacy, but it is for nought if the AMU decides it can still walk away with its flagrant violation of basic civil liberties. Or perhaps the frenzy generated by the incident will work as a deterrent factor to future institutions fixing their moral gaze upon their members. The strength of an incident as precedent can only be gauged effectively by how its future echoes use it as a reference point.

Meanwhile, what do these stories tell us about privacy?

The issues faced by the transgender community tell us that privacy doesn’t necessarily encompass a one-size-fits-all approach, and can raise as many questions as it answers. The issues faced by the Lucknow NGOs narrate a tale of institutionalized disrespect for privacy that has marginally more devastating consequences for the homosexual community by the spectre of outing. The issues faced by lesbian women evidence yet another need for breaching the public/private divide, demonstrating how the protection of the law might be welcome in the family sphere regardless of the bull-in-a-china-shop[55] prophecies of doom. Alternate sexual orientation and gender identity might bring the community under a common rubric, but distilling the components of that rubric is essential for engaging in any kind of useful understanding of the community and the kind of privacy violations it suffers – or engage with situations when the lack of privacy is empowering.

Selected incidents reported from 2001-2011

1	NGO charged with running gay club	8 July 2001	Times of India	http://goo.gl/MNHzw
2	Homosexuality okay if practiced in private	14 September 2011	Sify News	http://goo.gl/iF3PQ
3	Male callers harass lesbian helpline	26 October 2003	Mid Day Mumbai	http://goo.gl/Xf0fj
4	Lesbian marriages, born of a legal loophole, stir debate in India	4 February 2005	DesPardes	http://goo.gl/O30Hf
5	Third sex finds a place on Indian passport forms	10 March 2005	Telegraph	http://goo.gl/nBQIt
6	Lesbian couple sparks debate in Uttar Pradesh state	9 April 2005	Sify News	http://goo.gl/9GxuF
7	The Indian city of Chennai is set to build toilets for trans people	July 2005	Pink News	http://goo.gl/52Llq
8	Homosexual gangs	3 January 2006	Pioneer	http://goo.gl/NX2NP
9	Nihal was used to homosexual sex since 1986	4 January 2006	Dainik Jagran	http://goo.gl/NX2NP
10	Ain’t no cure for love	6 June 2006	India Together	http://goo.gl/V9Vjn
11	Police bust gay party	4 February 2008	Times of India	http://goo.gl/n2nyz
12	Aligarh Muslim University professor suspended for being gay	18 February 2010	Times of India	http://goo.gl/D8LuD
13	Class monitors	8 March 2010	Outlook	http://goo.gl/Q2dkV
14	Aligarh gay professor found dead, may have killed self	8 April 2010	Times of India	http://goo.gl/FyeIz
15	AMU professor a victim of clash between ‘tradition’ and privacy	25 February 2010	The Hindu	http://goo.gl/AtiJW
16	Criminal case registered against six in gay professor case	10 April 2010	India Today	http://goo.gl/LfwDI
17	AMU Prof promised money for sex: Rickshaw-puller	19 April 2010	Times of India	http://goo.gl/aXmBz
18	Varsity paid for sting on gay professor	19 February 2010	India Today	http://goo.gl/cyQxL
19	TV channel outs gay men, women in Hyderabad	24 February 2010	NDTV	http://goo.gl/w6NG4
20	News Broadcasting Standards Authority censures TV9 over privacy violations	25 March 2011	Privacy India	http://goo.gl/rY7bT
21	In a first, Gurgaon Court recognizes lesbian marriage	29 July 2011	Times of India	http://goo.gl/70KPr

Notes

[1].Madhavi Goradia Divan, Facets of Media Law, Eastern Book Company, Lucknow, 2006.

[2].For instance, an HIV positive man’s right to marry as discussed in Mr. X v. Hospital Z, 1998 (8) SCC 296.

[3].Section 377, Indian Penal Code.

[4].(2009) 160 DLT 277.

[5].http://www.openletter377.com/, last accessed 20 October 2007.

[6].Olmstead v. U.S., 277 U.S. 438, 478 (1928) (Brandeis, J., dissenting).

[7].Cathy Harris, Outing Privacy Litigation: Towards a Contextual Strategy for Lesbian and Gay Rights, 65 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 248.

[8].Ibid.

[9].Amita Dhanda, Constructing a New Human Rights Lexicon : Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Year 5 No. 8 Sao Paulo June 2008.

[10].See Henry Shue, Basic Rights Subsistence Affluence and US Foreign Policy, Princeton University Press, 2nd ed. 1996.

[11].Naz Foundation v. Government of NCT, Delhi, 160 (2009) DLT 277.

[12].Ibid., 47.

[13].Ibid., 26, 83, 113.

[14].Arvind Narrain, Queer: Law and Despised Sexualities in India, Books for Change, 2004.

[15].Men who have sex with men.

[16]."Gay Club Supplied Boys to Politicians"; "Gay Culture Started in UP in 1998 Itself", The Times of India.

[17].Criminal Misc. Case No. 2054/2001, as taken from Arvind Narrain, Queer: Law and Despised Sexualities in India.

[18].AIR 1963 SC 1295; it was Justice Subba Rao’s minority decision here that laid the foundation for the right to privacy in India.

[19].1975 (2) SCC 148.

[20]. Arvind Narrain, Queer: Law and Despised Sexualities in India, Books for Change, 2004.

[21].Ibid.

[21].Alok Gupta, Section 377 and the Dignity of Indian Homosexuals, http://www.iglhrc.org/binary-data/ATTACHMENT/file/000/000/15-1.pdf, last accessed on 9 August 2011.

[22].Ibid.

[23].http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Mumbai/Police_bust_gay_party/articleshow/2753740.cms, last accessed on 8 August 2011.

[24].Human Rights Violations in the Transgender Community: A Report by PUCL-K, 2nd ed. 2005.

[25].http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/04/india-gender, last accessed on 9 August 2011.

[26].http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-11518.html, last accessed on 10 August 2011.

[27].Transgender people deserve privacy, dignity, in public bathrooms, Maine Opinion, available at http://bangordailynews.com/2011/05/17/opinion/transgender-people-deserve-privacy-dignity-in-public-bathrooms/, last accessed on 20 August 2011.

[28].Transgender people deserve privacy, dignity, in public bathrooms, Maine Opinion, available at http://bangordailynews.com/2011/05/17/opinion/transgender-people-deserve-privacy-dignity-in-public-bathrooms/, last accessed on 20 August 2011.

[29].Siddharth Narrain, Being a Eunuch, available at http://www.countercurrents.org/gen-narrain141003.htm, last accessed on 20 August 2011.

[30].http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gLqrElQbWboJ:infochangeindia.org/human-rights/news/-third-sex-finds-a-place-on-indian-passport-forms.html+PASSPORT+APPLICATION+INDIA+gender&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=in&source=www.google.co.in, last accessed on 9 August 2011.

[31].http://passport.gov.in/cpv/ppapp1.pdf, last accessed on 9 August 2011.

[32].http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/andhra-pradesh-government-gives-in-to-sexuality-bias-71454, last accessed on 8 August 2011.

[33].Gee Ameena Suleiman, Non-Hijra Transgenders Struggle for Identity, Daily News and Analysis, available at http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report_non-hijra-transgenders-struggle-for-identity_1588421, last accessed on 25 August 2011.

[34].Arvind Narrain and Vinay Chandran, It’s Not My Job to tell you It’s okay to be Gay – Medicalisation of Homosexuality: A Queer Critique, available at http://www.altlawforum.org/gender-and-sexuality/publications/medicalizationfinal.rtf/at_download/filehttp://www.altlawforum.org/gender-and-sexuality/publications/medicalizationfinal.rtf/at_download/file, last accessed on 20 August 2011.

[35].160 (2009) DLT 277.

[36].http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/pdfid/4b6fe2110.pdf, last accessed 9 August 2011.

[37].Arvind Narrain. and Tarunabh Khaitan, Medicalisation of Homosexuality : A Human Rights Approach, as taken from Bina Fernandez (ed.), Humjinsi: A Resource Book on Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Rights in India (New Delhi : India Centre for Human Rights and the Law, 2002).

[38].Vinay Chandran, Ain’t no cure for love, India Together, last accessed on 8 August 2011.

[39].Supra n. 32.

[40].Maya Sharma, Loving Women: Being Lesbian in Unprivileged India, Yoda Press, 2006.

[41].India: Second NGO Shadow Report on CEDAW, November 2006, available at http://www.iwraw-ap.org/resources/pdf/India%20Shadow%20report.pdf, last accessed on 10 September 2011.

[42].http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-01-24/kolkata/28367047_1_girls-suicide-lesbian-couple, last accessed on 10 September 2011.

[43].http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-02-22/kolkata/28624865_1_lesbian-couple-suicide-field, last accessed on 10 September 2011.

[44].Saptarshi Mandal, Right to Privacy in Naz Foundation: A Counter-Heteronormative Critique, 3 NUJS L. Rev. 2009.

[45].Vinay Sitapati, The Spectre of Naz, as available at http://www.indianexpress.com/news/the-spectre-of-naz/609695/0, last accessed on 9 August 2011.

[46].http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-02-18/india/28118769_1_shrinivas-ramchandra-siras-rickshaw-puller-amu-campus, last accessed on 11 August 2011.

[47]. Arvind Narrain, et al, Policing Morality at AMU: An Independent Fact-Finding Report, available at http://www.fridae.com/newsfeatures/2010/03/10/9724.policing-morality-at-amu-an-independent-fact-finding-report?n=sea&nm=amu, last accessed on 11 August 2011.

[48].Dr. Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras & Ors v. The Aligarh Muslim University & Ors, Civil Misc. Writ Petition No.17549 of 2010.

[49].Vinay Sitapati, The Spectre of Naz, as available at http://www.indianexpress.com/news/the-spectre-of-naz/609695/0, last accessed on 9 August 2011.

[50]. Supra n. 32

[51].Lgbt-india@yahoogroups.com. This is possibly the most prolific mailing list for LGBT persons in the country, and is constantly active with atleast 4-5 mails being exchanged per day.

[52].Code of Ethics and Broadcasting Standards of the News Broadcasters Association.

[53].Code 9, Code of Ethics and Broadcasting Standards of the News Broadcasters Association.

[54].TV9 Ordered to Air Apology for Sting available at http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/report_tv9-ordered-to-air-apology-for-sting_1527622, last accessed on 10 September 2011.

[55].“Introduction of constitutional law in the home … is like introducing a bull in a china shop. It will prove to be a ruthless destroyer of the marriage institution”, Rohatgi, J. in Harvinder Kaur v. Harmander Singh Choudhry, AIR 1984 Del 66.

* The author, Danish Sheikh works with the Alternative Law Forum in Bangalore, India.

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

Sixth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum, Nairobi: A Summary

praskrishna — 2011-10-24T09:09:14Z

The sixth annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum was held from 27 to 30 September 2011 at the United Nations Office in Nairobi, Kenya. Sunil Abraham participated in six workshops: Privacy, Security, and Access to Rights: A Technical and Policy Analyses, Use of Digital Technologies for Civic Engagement and Political Change: Lessons Learned and Way Forward, The Impact of Regulation: FOSS and Enterprise, Proprietary Influences in Free and Open Source Software: Lessons to Open and Universal Internet Standards, Access and Diversity of Broadband Internet Access and Putting Users First: How Can Privacy be Protected in Today’s Complex Mobile Ecosystem?

Privacy, Security, and Access to Rights: A Technical and Policy Analyses

Workshop No. 219
The workshop was moderated by Kim Pham, Expression Technologies, Civil Society (United States). The panel members included Carlos Affonso Pereira de Souza, Centro de Technologica e Socieda (Brazil), Christopher Soghoian, Indiana University (United States), Karen Reilly, Tor Project, Technical/Civil Society (United States) and Sunil Abraham, Centre for Internet and Society (India).
See the workshop details here

Use of Digital Technologies for Civic Engagement and Political Change: Lessons Learned and Way Forward

Workshop No. 184
The workshop was moderated by Katim S Touray Council Vice Chair, Free Software and Open Source Foundation for Africa and Member, ICANN Board of Directors. Fouad Bajwa of Gerry Morgan Foundation (Pakistan) was the remote moderator. Nnenna Nwakanma of Nnenna.org, Simeon Oriko of @TheKuyuProject &@StorySpaces, Wael Khalil, Activist and Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet & Society were the panel members. Nishant Shah from the Centre for Internet & Society participated remotely from Bangalore.
See the workshop details here
See the entire transcription here

The Impact of Regulation: FOSS and Enterprise

Workshop No. 211
The workshop was moderated by Dorothy Gordon, Director General, AITI-KACE, Judy Okite was the remote moderator. The panel members were Satish Babu, ICFOSS, India, Yves Miezan Ezo, Smile Training, Manager, (France), Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore, Evans Ikua, FOSS Certification Manager, ict@innovation program.
See the workshop details here
See the entire transcription here

Proprietary Influences in Free and Open Source Software: Lessons to Open and Universal Internet Standards

Workshop No. 201
The workshop was moderated by Alejandro Pisanty, Director General for Academic Computing Services of the National University of Mexico (UNAM), Mexico. Tracy Hackshaw, Computer Society of Trinadad and Tobago, Trinadad and Tobago, Venkatesh Hariharan, Head of Public Policy and Government Affairs at Google, India and Scott O Bradner, University Technology Security Officer, Harvard University, USA were the panel members.
See the workshop details here
See the entire transcription here

Access and Diversity of Broadband Internet Access

Workshop No. 113
The workshop was moderated by N Ravi Shanker, Addl Secy, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Information Technology, Government of India (Chair). Abhishek Singh, Director, Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Information Technology, Government of India, Venkatesh Hariharan, Head of Public Policy and Government Relations, Google India and Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, The Centre for Internet and Society, India were the panel members.
See the workshop details here
See the entire transcription here

Putting users First: How can Privacy be Protected in Today’s Complex Mobile Ecosystem?

Workshop No. 75
This workshop was moderated by Ambassador David Gross, Partner, Wiley Rein LLP, Yiannis Theodorou, Regulatory Policy Manager, GSMA was the remote moderator. The panel members included Pat Walshe, Director of Privacy-GSMA), Jeff Brueggeman (Vice President-Publiy Policy AT&T), Patrick Ryan, Policy Counsel, Open Internet for Google Inc, Ms Juliana Rotich, Executive Director of Ushahidi Inc, Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, The Centre for Internet and Society (India) and Ian Brown, co-director of Oxford University's Information Security and Privacy Programme.
See the workshop details here
See the entire transcription here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/sixth-annual-meeting-igf

Ninth Workshop on Media Economics

praskrishna — 2011-11-28T09:12:24Z

The Higher School of Economics and the New Economic School have joined hands to organize the ninth workshop on media economics in Moscow on October 28 and 29, 2011. All events are scheduled to take place in Marriott Courtyard, a hotel in the centre of Moscow within 10-minute walking distance from the Kremlin, the Red Square, and the Bolshoi Theatre.

Workshop Program

Friday, October 28, 2011

8:00 a.m. Morning coffee

8:45 a.m. Opening remarks

Media markets - 1: Newspapers, Mergers, and Diversity

9:00 a.m. Michal MASIKA, University of Munich

"Free commuter newspapers and the market for paid-for daily newspapers"

Discussant: Sergey V. Popov, Higher School of Economics

9:40 a.m. Lapo FILISTRUCCHI, Tilburg University and University of Florence

Tobias J. Klein, Tilburg University

Thomas Michielsen, Tilburg University

"Merger Simulation in a Two-Sided Market: The Case of the Dutch Daily Newspapers"

Discussant: Lars Sørgard, Norwegian School of Economics

10:20 a.m. Lisa GEORGE, Hunter College, City University of New York

Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Harvard Business School

"Diversity in Local Television News"

Discussant: François Keslair, Paris School of Economics

11:00 a.m. Coffee break

Media markets and Internet - 1: Advertising and Search Engines

11:30 a.m. Alexandre de CORNIÈRE, Paris School of Economics

"Search advertising"

Discussant: Simon Anderson, University of Virginia

12:10 p.m. Alexander WHITE, Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management

Kamal Jain, Microsoft Research

"The Attention Economy of Search and Web Advertisement"

Discussant: Sergei Izmalkov, New Economic School

12:50 p.m. Lunch

Political Economy - 1: Media, Elites, and the Groups of Influence

2:00 p.m. Leopoldo FERGUSSON, Universidad de Los Andes

"Media Markets, Special Interests, and Voters"

Discussant: Alexei V. Zakharov, Higher School of Economics

2:40 p.m. David STRÖMBERG, IIES at Stockholm University

Ben Qin, IIES at Stockholm University

Yanhui Wu, USC Marshall School of Business

"Determinants of Media Capture in China"

Discussant: Maria Petrova, New Economic School

3:20 p.m. Daniel STONE, Oregon State University

"Media and Gridlock"

Discussant: Elena Panova, Academy of National Economy and Gaidar Institute

4:00 p.m. Coffee break

Media markets and Internet - 2: Internet Effects and Offline Media Markets

4:30 p.m. Joel WALDFOGEL, University of Minnesota

"Bye, Bye, Miss American Pie? The Supply of New Recorded Music since Napster"

Discussant: Ruben Enikolopov, New Economic School

5:10 p.m. Ignacio FRANCESCHELLI, Northwestern University

"When the Ink is Gone: The Impact of Internet on News Coverage"

Discussant: Ruben Durante, Sciences Po Paris

5:50 p.m. Adjourn

7:00 p.m. Dinner

Saturday October 29th

8:00 a.m. Morning Coffee

Media markets - 2: Interactions in Traditional and Digital Media Industry

9:00 a.m. Harald Nygård Bergh, Norwegian School of Economics

Hans Jarle KIND, Norwegian School of Economics

Bjørn-Atle Reme, Norwegian School of Economics

Lars Sørgard, Norwegian School of Economics

"Competition between Content Distributors in Two-Sided Markets"

Discussant: Guido Friebel, Goethe University Frankfurt

9:40 a.m. Larbi Alaoui, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Fabrizio GERMANO, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

"Time Scarcity and the Market for News"

Discussant: Sergei Guriev, New Economic School

10:20 a.m. Coffee break

Political Economy - 2: Media Effects

10:50 a.m. Francesco Drago, University of Naples

Tommaso Nannicini, Bocconi University

Francesco SOBBRIO, IMT Lucca

"Newspapers, Local News and Electoral Politics"

Discussant: Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, Paris School of Economics

11:30 p.m. Julia CAGÉ, Harvard University

François Keslair, Paris School of Economics

"Trash Media and the Decline of Turnout: Theory and Evidence from Local Media Competition in France, 1944-2010"

Discussant: Francesco Sobbrio, IMT Lucca

12:10 p.m. Parallel events (choose your favorite):

Lunch - or -

Global New Media Policy

Roundtable (with refreshments, RSVP required, more details here)

Pedro MIZUKAMI, FGV Center for Technology and Society, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Sunil ABRAHAM, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India

Bruce ETLING and Robert FARIS, Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard University, United States

Marina ZHUNICH, Google Russia

Media markets - 3: Media Bias

2:00 p.m. Stefano DELLAVIGNA, UC Berkeley

Alec Kennedy, San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank

“Does Media Concentration Lead to Biased Coverage? Evidence from Movie Reviews”

Discussant: Joel Waldfogel, University of Minnesota

2:40 p.m. Matthias HEINZ, Goethe University Frankfurt

Guido Friebel, Goethe University Frankfurt

"Media bias against foreign owners: Downsizing"

Discussant: Olga Kuzmina, New Economic School

3:20 p.m. Break

Future Directions of Research in Media Economics

3:30 p.m. Roundtable

Simon ANDERSON, University of Virginia

Stefano DELLAVIGNA, UC Berkeley

Lisa GEORGE, Hunter College, City University of New York

David STRÖMBERG, IIES at Stockholm University

4:45 p.m. Farewell reception

The above agenda was published in Higher School of Economics website, click here.

VIDEO

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/media-economics-workshop

Growing Wikipedia: The India Chronicles

praskrishna — 2011-10-14T09:17:08Z

Tory Read, a professional researcher, writer and journalist was commissioned by the Wikimedia Foundation to create a vivid description of its work in India. This was done in the interest of transparency and to ensure that it captured lessons from this new approach. Tory travelled for a couple of weeks across Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore and some towns in Kerala — attending community meet-ups speaking with a host of individual community members in these cities. Tory has given a journalistic account and analysis, based on document review, interviews and observations conducted between November 2010 and June 2011, including 16 days in India in June 2011.The views expressed herein are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Wikimedia Foundation.

Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of the Centre for Internet and Society has been quoted in this report. The following are some direct quotes extracted out from this report:

"Feuding and flaming is an integral part of free software culture.” “You can’t imagine a mailing list without flaming." [The Chapter and the Community Tangle, page 16]

"The crisis on the mailing list was ultimately a great thing.” “There was conflict, dozens of offline conversations, private and public negotiation and airing of views and doubts, followed by a public commitment to work together for a shared purpose." [Necessity Breeds Collaboration, page 19]

"The Foundation’s job is having meetings and growing and holding the consensus." "It should be creating situations in which trust is gained, and you do this through radical transparency and participation. The point of the Foundation’s work is to build the community." [For the Foundation, page 24]

Download the entire report here [PDF, 2.9 MB]

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

SCOSTA and UID Comparison not Valid, says Finance Committee

elonnai — 2011-11-22T16:37:43Z

The Standing Committee on Finance Branch, Lok Sabha Secretariat has responded to the suggestions offered by CIS on the National Identification Authority of India, Bill 2010 and has requested it to mail its views by 14 October 2011.

On January 6, 2011, CIS had sent an open letter to the Parliamentary Finance Committee demonstrating how the Aadhaar biometric standard is weaker than the SCOSTA standard. The text of the reply is reproduced below.

Sir,

This is in response to one of the views/suggestions offered by CIS on the National Identification Authority of India Bill, 2010.

CIS View /Suggestion:

"Though the Aadhaar biometrics are useful for the de-duplication and identification of individuals, the Smart Card Operating System for Transport Application [(SCOSTA), developed by the National Informatics Centre in India)] standard is a more secure, structurally sound, and cost-effective approach to authentication of identity for India. Therefore, the Aadhaar biometric based authentication process should be replaced with a SCOSTA standard based authentication process."

In this regard, do you agree with the following view? If not, please justify.

"Comparison between SCOSTA and the UID project are not valid since SCOSTA is fundamentally a standard for smart card based authentication and does not work for the objectives of the unique id project.

The UID project follows a different approach and has multiple objectives — providing identity to residents of India, ensuring inclusion of poor and marginalized residents in order to enable access to benefits and services, eliminating the fakes, duplicates and ghost identities prevalent in other databases and provide a platform for authentication in a cost effective and accessible manner.

UIDAI is not issuing cards or smart cards. Cards can be issued by agencies that are providing services. UID authentication does not exclude smart cards — service providers can still choose to issue smart cards to their beneficiaries or customers if they want to."

You are requested to email your view by 14 October, 2011 positively.

Standing Committee on Finance Branch
Lok Sabha Secretariat

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/scosta-uid-comparison-invalid

Seventh Open Letter to the Finance Committee: A Note on the Deduplication of Unique Identifiers

praskrishna — 2011-11-22T07:28:11Z

Sahana Sarkar on behalf of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) had sent in a Right to Information application on 30 June 2011 to Ashish Kumar, Central Public Information Officer, UIDAI. The UIDAI sent in its reply. Through the seventh open letter, Hans attempts to characterize in an abstract way the replies that CIS managed to elicit and makes some elementary observations. The UIDAI records one or more biometric signatures of those individuals to whom it assigns its unique identity or identifier ; and for convenience let us call this the process of registering an applicant. In the normal course of registration the signatures of an applicant will be compared to those already recorded; and the outcomes of this exercise of comparing suites of biometric signatures — fingerprints and iris-scans, say — may be regarded as the values of a binary variable:

With more than one signature, we have Y = 1 only when those of the applicant match the signatures in some other suite of such item by item; and Y = 0 then if at least one of his or her signatures fails to match any already recorded one.

Though the circumstance should be unlikely, a person who has already been registered may apply again to be registered: with fraudulent intent maybe: or simply because he or she has lost the document – some identity card, perhaps – which bears the identifier assigned to him or her by the UIDAI. And the possibilities here may be regarded as the values of a binary variable:

Though we are regarding X and Y as variables equally, and taking them for jointly distributed ones, there is an evident asymmetry between them. The exercise of trying to match a given suite of signatures to some set of other suites can be performed so long as the signatures remain available; but for a given applicant the values of X refer to events already past. Faced with an applicant of whom they may suppose no more than what he or she may disclose, the personnel of the UIDAI cannot directly estimate either of the two quantities:

We have p[X = 0] + p[X = 1] = 1 here, needless to say, so there is only one quantity that needs estimating. But it is worth emphasizing that even when an applicant declares himself to have been registered already— and has come, say, to have a lost card newly issued — the personnel of the UIDAI are obliged to remain agnostic about p[X = 1] : no matter how ready they are to believe him.[1]

That no individual should be assigned more than one identifier is an entirely evident desideratum: so the process of comparing the signatures of a fresh applicant to those already recorded must be a strict one. But the process of comparison should also make it very likely that, when a match of signatures does occur, the applicant is someone who has in fact been registered already. The chance that a genuinely new applicant’s signatures will match some already recorded suite should be very small: the proportion of such mistaken matches, among all matches, should be as low as possible. This proportion is usually denoted by p[X = 0 | Y = 1] : the conditional probability that X = 0 given that Y = 1 : the chance that, despite a match of signatures, the applicant has not in fact been registered already. The defining formula:

relates this conditional probability to the ‘absolute’ or ‘raw’ probabilities of the events [Y = 1] and [X = 0 and Y = 1] ; the second of which is sometimes said to be contained in the first.

Suppose that there have been N applicants thus far. It is usual to say N trials of X and Y have occurred; but only the outcomes for Y are known. Suppose that matches have been found some m times out of these N ; then N − m applicants will have been registered. With regard to these trials, set

Note that these numbers are not individually known; but as the specified events exhaust the possibilities, we have c 00 +c 01 +c 10 +c 11 = N ; and we do know that

The ratio m/N would be a reasonable estimate of p[Y = 1] ; and (N − m)/N a reasonable estimate of p[Y = 0] = 1 − p[Y = 1] likewise. The quantity we are seeking is p[X = 0 | Y = 1] however: of which the ratio c 01/m would be a natural estimate. But unless we have some sense of the relative magnitudes of c 01 and c 11 the quantity

could be anything between 0 and 1 now. To estimate the relative magnitudes of c 01 and c 11 in any direct way would be difficult, because one has no purchase on how likely the events [X = 0 & Y = 1] or [X = 1 & Y = 1] are. So p[X = 0 | Y = 1] must be estimated directly, it would seem; and we shall come back to the question.

The reply we have received from the UIDAI indicates that 2.59 × 107 registrations — or successful ‘enrolments’, as they have put it — had been effected by 17.08.2011;while the ‘enrolments rejected’ came to 2.005 × 103 they say. Enrolments were rejected when ‘residents were duplicates’: if we take this to mean that an applicant was refused registry on account of his signatures matching some suite of signatures already recorded, then we may suppose that

The False Positive Identification Rate, or FPIR, is defined in that reply as the ratio of the number of the number of false positive identification decisions to the total number of enrolment transactions by unenrolled individuals : if by “unenrolled individual” we understand an applicant of whom [X = 0] actually obtains, then in our notation we have

rather: which would be a natural estimate of p[X = 0 & Y = 1] now, and since

the ‘false postive identification rate’ thus construed could be bound, at least, if p[X = 0 | Y = 1] itself could be. At any rate, this latter proportion seems to be the most pertinent one here: p[X = 0 | Y = 1] is the conditional probability, of mistaken matches, that the UIDAI must strive to keep as low as possible.

The reply from the UIDAI defines a false negative identification as an incorrect decision of a biometric system that an applicant for a UID, making no attempt to avoid recognition, has not been previously enrolled in the system, when in fact they have. One is at a loss to understand how the personnel of the UIDAI are to determine when an applicant is making no attempt to avoid recognition. Putting that aside, the False Negative Identification Rate or FNIR would now appear to be p[X = 1 | Y = 0] : the probability that, despite his or her signatures not matching any already recorded suite, an applicant has in fact already been registered: and with our notation

now. But c 10 cannot be reliably estimated, again, because one has no purchase on how likely [X = 1 & Y = 0] is; and the conditional probability p[X = 1 | Y = 0] will have to be estimated or bound in some direct way as well.

The preceding paragraphs have asserted that, in order to estimate or effectively bound the identification rates being sought by the UIDAI, the conditional probabilities p[X = 0 | Y = 1] and p[X = 1 | Y = 0] will have to be addressed in some direct way: without any attempt to estimate the likelihoods of [X = 0 & Y = 1] and [X = 1 & Y = 0] by themselves, that is to say. There might be ways of reliably estimating these conditional probabilities; and the manufacturers of the devices that produce the signatures may have provided tight bounds on what they would be — when the devices are working properly, at least. But let us now consider how the UIDAI has elaborated on these rates.

Their reply to our second question states that the biometric service providers have to meet the following accuracy SLA’s for FPIR and FNIR:

The condition of ‘non-duplication’ in the requirement (P) implies that the FPIR is being understood now as the formula in (†) above computes it: as an estimate of the conditional probability p[Y = 1 |X = 0]: since one already knows that [X = 0] for each enrolment here. Such an estimate could be made if one had obtained a sample of suites of signatures from distinct individuals — where no two suites in the sample could have come from the same individual — and compared each suite to every other: the proportion of matches found would be an estimate of p[Y = 1 |X = 0] now.[2]

The ‘biometric service providers’ the UIDAI has contracted with are presumably able to perform such experiments accurately. But an estimate of p[Y = 1 |X = 0] will not, as we shall momentarily see, by itself readily yield a usable bound on p[X = 0 | Y = 1] : on the crucial likelihood that, despite his or her suite of signatures matching a suite already recorded, an applicant has not in fact been registered.

The condition “ONLY duplicate enrolments” in the requirement (N) implies that the FNIR is being understood as an estimate of the conditional probability p[Y = 0 |X = 1] now: as one already knows that [X = 1] for each enrolment here. The biometric service providers should be able to estimate this probability as well. The FNIR as (‡) construes it is an estimate of p[X = 1 | Y = 0] rather; but a usable bound for this likelihood is readily got from p[Y = 0 |X = 1] now, for we may surely expect p[X = 1] < p[Y = 0].

Let us see if the requirement (P) will yield any usable upper bound on the crucial likelihood p[X = 0 | Y = 1]: which, to note it again, is what the UIDAI must seek to minimise. Consider the consequences when the FPIR is understood as (P) envisages. Taken together with formula (1) above we have

If we are not willing to wager on any upper limit appreciably less than 1 for p[X = 0] , we obtain

now.[3] Unless one can reasonably suppose that the event [Y = 1] never occurs, one must grant that p[Y = 1] > 0 . We have

But this inequality yields a usable upper bound only when K < 3: only when K is 1 or 2 that is. In either case, only by supposing that p[Y = 1] > 10−2 will the accuracy mandated for the FPIR by the UIDAI yield a usable upper bound on p[X = 0 | Y = 1] . Since the UIDAI expects that p[Y = 1] < 10−2 surely, we must conclude now that the requirements it has imposed on its ‘biometric service providers’ will not help its personnel estimate an upper limit for the crucial likelihood that, despite his or her suite signatures matching some already recorded suite, an applicant for a UID has not in fact been registered already: which likelihood, to insist again, is what the UIDAI must seek to minimise.

The argument just made will seem perverse: but the calculation is perfectly general. Suppose an FPIR limit of 10−J is mandated; then, unless one is willing to wager an upper limit on p[X = 0] , one cannot get a usable upper bound on p[X = 0 | Y = 1] from this limit on the FPIR, used all by itself, unless one supposes that p[Y = 1] > 10−J+1.

To save writing, denote by L01 the crucial likelihood p[X = 0 | Y = 1] ; and suppose that is some desired upper bound on L01 now. Assume that the FPIR achieved by a service provider is an accurate estimate of p[Y = 1 |X = 0] ; then from (1) we get

Now [X = 0] should not be a rare event at all, and, conversely, [Y = 1] should be a rare event.[4] So one should be able to set some reasonable upper limit to the ratio p[Y = 1]/ p[X = 0] : but without attempting any precise estimate, at all, of either individual probability. One may reasonably expect, for instance, that no more than one in a thousand applicants for a uid will already have been registered; and when p[X = 1] < 10−3 we will have

from (3) above. This calculation can be repeated with any number m in place of 3 here, of course, provided p[X = 1] < 10−m and p[Y = 1] < 10−m are both likely; and it seems entirely reasonable, now, for the UIDAI to insist that its biometric service providers meet the requirement.

for some appropriate upper bound X on L01 . The considerations leading to (4) make it reasonable to insist on m _ 3 now; and recalling what L01 is — the crucial likelihood that, despite his or her signatures matching some already recorded suite of signatures, an applicant has not in fact been registered — the UIDAI will have to insist on some quite small bound X: for it would not want, too often, to refuse anyone a UID on account of a mistaken match of biometric signatures.[6]

It would be foolish to speculate on what the authorities regard as acceptable error here; but if the UIDAI is of a mind that such mistakes should happen less than one in a thousand times say, then, taking the minimal value of 3 for m in the suggested requirement (R), it should demand an FPIR less than 10−6 : a ‘false positive identification rate’ a thousand-fold less than the limit currently imposed.

[1]Should it seem entirely odd to talk of probability when one of the events in question — either [X = 0] or [X = 1] — will already have occurred, we may regard the probabilities we assign them as measures of our uncertainty only: but no practical question hinges on probabilities being understood ‘subjectively’ rather than ‘objectively’.

[2]It might be well to note, however, that the size of the sample must be manageable: for a sample of size K a total of K • (K − 1)/2 comparisons will have to be performed.

[3]Wagering an upper limit on p[X = 0] would require one to reasonably estimate the probability of finding already-registered individuals among applicants.

[4]The event [Y = 1] must be just as rare, one supposes, as [X = 0] is frequent.

[5]We are supposing, that is to say, that matches of biometic signatures are very rarely mistaken matches.

[6]A small _ is consistent with supposing that p[X = 1] and p[Y = 1] are commensurate probabilites. If p[X = 0 | Y = 1] < 10−3 for instance, then p[X = 1 | Y = 1] _ (103 − 1)/103 ; one may suppose, that is, that [X = 1] will be the case 999 out of a 1000 times that [Y = 1] obtains; and, of course, to suppose that [X = 1] will be appreciably more frquent than [Y = 1] is to grant that biometric signatures will fail appreciably often to distinguish individuals.

See the RTI application of 30/06/2011 [PDF, 15 kb].

Download the Seventh Open Letter here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/de-duplication-of-unique-identifiers

Hack Night in CIS ― A Meeting of Java Script Hackers

Tom Dane — 2011-10-27T11:36:26Z

CIS hosted a hack night in conjunction with the tech-event organizers HasGeek at its office on 24 September 2011. The event brought together local java script hackers on a common platform. Tom Dane and Kiran Jonnalagadda participated in the event.

The idea behind hosting the event was to have fun building cool stuff. The participants met in the afternoon to decide on projects and group into teams, and then Sudar Muthu gave an explanation of node.js and its usage for the hack. There were also some very cool free t-shirts. Much code was written and caffeine shared until the morning when the projects were uploaded online.

One project was a game allowing players to pass a ball between computers. The source code is available here on GitHub. Aditya Yadav also worked on the beautiful jsFoo website during the night. Our friends from HasGeek made a short video showing a snippet of the event:

Below is the full list of participants:

Kiran Jonnalagadda
Aditya Yadav
Ritesh Kadmawala
MS Prakas Kumar Chakka
Amarjit Singh
Arun Kumar
Sudar Muthu
Aravinda VK
Ciju Cherian and
Pradip Caulagi

If you feel sad missing an event like this, be excited because HasGeek is hosting Droidcon India next month.
About Hasgeek
HasGeek is a developer-led initiative, and has been un-organising the unconference scene since 2010. HasGeek is an attempt to solve the problem of insipid conferences organised around buzzwords by uninterested, soulless corporate entities who pitch them as company training events or as places for companies to pick up hot developers.

For more info on Hasgeek, click here
For info on jsFoo, click here

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

UID: Questions without Answers – A Talk by Usha Ramanathan

Natasha Vaz — 2011-11-24T04:41:41Z

UID enrolment is in full swing, providing an official identification to millions of Indians, yet there are numerous unanswered questions. A public talk on UID was held at the Institute of Science, Bangalore on September 6, 2011. Usha Ramanathan, an independent law researcher on jurisprudence, poverty and rights, discussed the questions that plague the UID project and the veil of silence enveloping the answers.

Ms. Ramanathan began her presentation by describing the progress and evolution of the UID project. She stated three adjectives that reflect the target goal of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI): unique, ubiquitous and universal. She demonstrated how their initial objectives and claims have been drastically altered in three major ways.

First and foremost, the UIDAI claimed that enrolment is voluntary, not mandatory, and hence, inclusive. Yet, Nandan Nilekani has consistently maintained that other agencies may make it compulsory. UID is becoming ubiquitous and is a prerequisite for access to a wide variety of welfare schemes and services such as PDS, MGNREGS, banks, public health, etc. It is thus clear that this could actually exclude those who do not have a number or whose biometrics doesn't work. Therefore, this undermines the inclusive nature of the project.

Second, the UIDAI claimed that the UID would enable inclusive growth. Ms. Ramanathan expressed a serious concern surrounding the risk of exclusion. Instead of facilitating inclusion, around two to five per cent of the Indian population would be excluded from the current process of authentication and potentially from having a UID number, as they do not have viable biometric data.[1] Physical or visual impairments such as corneal blindness, corneal scars, and malnourishment induced cataracts or ‘low-quality’ fingerprints from a lifetime of hard labour inhibit those from providing valid fingerprints or iris scans.[2]

Third, Ms. Ramanathan reiterated that the National Identification Authority India Bill prohibited sharing data, except by the consent of the resident, by a court order or for national security. However, UID information is being directly fed into the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) who will then provide information about people that is in 21 databases, to eleven security agencies, including the RAW and IB over which there is no superintendence or oversight.[3] She discussed the high likelihood of a breach of privacy as there are insufficient standards protecting an individual from unlawful invasion. Additionally, the UIDAI does not have mechanisms in place for an individual to be notified if there is a data breach.

Who owns this project?

A very important question asked is, “Who owns this project?” Ms. Ramanathan stated that the convergence of information especially during the ‘de-duplication process clearly reflects the corporatization of the project. She also questioned the background of some of the technological companies involved. For instance, L-1 Identity Solutions is well known for its links with the CIA. Additionally, Accenture is on a Smart Borders project with US Homeland Security. She explained that ownership also plays into the feasibility and financial cost of the project. Furthermore, the UIDAI has not conducted a feasibility study on the technology or the financial cost of the project.

International Experience

Lastly, Ms. Ramanathan discussed the international experience of a universal identity system. In the United Kingdom, their universal system of identification was labelled as ‘intrusive bullying’ as well as ‘an assault on personal liberties’. The United States and the United Kingdom both abandoned a universal identity system, as it was impractical, unjustified and dangerous.

Ms. Ramanathan raised many questions that evoked thought and discussion from the audience. She provided numerous examples of ambiguity, misconceptions and confusion surrounding the UID project. She urged the audience to exercise their civil liberties or risk losing them. Lastly, she believed that an informed debate involving the UIDAI and the public is long overdue.

“The UIDAI must clarify misconception and provide detailed answers to crucial questions, as there is a lack of understanding within the general population about the UID. Therefore, the UIDAI and the Government of India must increase and ensure transparency of the UID project”, she added.

Ms. Usha Ramanathan was speaking at an event organised by Concern, an IISc Student group. She was speaking in her personal capacity and the opinions reflected above are necessarily not those of CIS.

[1] Biometrics Design Standards for UID Applications (December 2009).

[2] Biometrics Design Standards for UID Applications (December 2009).

[3]Usha Ramanathan, The Myth of the Technology Fix, http://www.india-seminar.com/2011/617/617_usha_ramanathan.htm.

VIDEO

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/UID_Questions_without_Answers

Understanding the Right to Information

elonnai — 2013-06-12T11:39:05Z

Elonnai Hickok summarises the Right to Information Act, 2005, how it works, how to file an RTI request, the information that an individual can request under the Act, the possible responses and the challenges to the citizen and the government. She concludes by saying that there are many structural changes that both citizens and governmental officers can make to improve the system.

Introduction

The Right to Information Act, 2005 (RTI) was created in 2005 and marked an important time in Indian legislative history. The Right to Information enables citizens to hold the government accountable and ensure that it is a transparent body. Questions that can be asked by the citizen to the government range from anything that may concern to some meeting notes to why a teacher is not present in a public school, etc. In the current RTI system there are many challenges that are inhibiting the government’s efficient delivery of the RTI as a service to the people. This has changed the concept of how the citizens view the RTI, as the government feels harassed and the citizens feel as though their rights are being unjustly denied. Additionally, individuals have turned the RTI into a redressal mechanism rather than a way to ensure transparency and learn/understand how their government is functioning. The use of the RTI as a redressal mechanism has created a relationship of animosity between the government and citizens. The below note outlines the ecosystem of the RTI and notes specific challenges that both citizens and the government face.[1]

The RTI Ecosystem

RTI work flow

An individual files an RTI with the central/ state public information officer (PIO) or a specific PIO. PIOs are often not trained, and rarely apply for the position, but are instead designated.
Within five days the information is to be forwarded to the correct PIO.
The PIO must open a file and dispose of the request within 30 days.
If the PIO fails to reply to the applicant by either approving or denying a request, the PIO is liable to pay a fine of Rs. 250 for each day of delay.
If information is electronically uploaded, it is stored in any format the officer chooses (jpeg, pdf, html, etc).
Except for land records and staff records, files are retained for a maximum of one year.
If the PIO does not dispose of the request, there is scope for an appeal within 30-45 days to the appellate authority.
There is scope for a second appeal to the information commissioner if the authority does not respond within 90 days or the answer is found to be unsatisfactory.
The final decision of the information commissioner is binding.

Filing an RTI request

Though there is no specific format an individual must follow when submitting an RTI, when filing a request, individuals must include:

His /her name and address.
The name and address of the public information officer (PIO).
The particulars of information/documents required (limited to 150 words and one subject matter).
The time period of the information required.
Proof of payment.
Signature.
Proof if the individual is a BPL holder.[2]

Information that an individual can request under the RTI Act

Inspection of work, documents, and records
Taking notes, extracts or certified copies of documents or records.
Taking certified samples of material.
Obtaining of information in the form of diskettes, floppies, tapes, and video cassettes, or in any other electronic mode, or through printouts where such information is stored in a computer, or in any other device.
Obtaining the status of an RTI request or complaint.

Note: If an individual is requesting third party information, the PIO must inform the third party and provide the individual the opportunity to state a reason for not disclosing the information.

Accepted format of requested materials and records

Material requested can be in any format including: records, documents, memos, emails, opinions, advices, press releases, circulars, orders, logbooks, contracts, reports, papers, samples, models, and data material held in any electronic form.
Records requested can include: any document, manuscript and file, any microfilm, microfiche and facsimile copy of a document, and reproduction of image or images embodied in such microfilm (whether enlarged or not), and any other material produced by a computer or any other device.

Possible Responses to an RTI request

An information officer can respond to an RTI in the following ways:

Transfer request to appropriate PIO within five days and notify the applicant about the transfer.
Provide the requested information within 30 days.
Reject the request information within 30 days stating the reasons for rejection, the period within which an appeal against such rejection may be preferred, and the details of the appellate authority.
Not respond to the applicant. If no response is received within 30 days the officer is liable for a penalty of Rs. 250 per day.

Appeal/Complaint Process

First appeal can be filed after 30 days or if the information given was unsatisfactory. The appeal must include: name and address of the appellant, name and address of the PIO involved, brief facts leading to appeal, relief sought, grounds for appeal, and copies of the application or documents involved, including copies of the reply, if received from the PIO.
Second appeal must contain: name and address of the applicant, and name and address of the PIO involved, particulars of the Order including the number if any against which the appeal is preferred, brief facts leading to the appeal, if appeal/complaint is preferred against deemed refusal then the particulars of the application, including number and date and name, address of the PIO to whom the application was originally made, relief sought, grounds for the relief, verification by the applicant, any other information which the commission may deem necessary for deciding during the appeal, self attested copies of the application or documents involved, copies of the documents relied upon by the appellant and referred to in the appeal, and an index of the documents referred to in the appeal.
A complaint must include: name and address of the complainant, name and address of the state PIO against whom the complaint is being made, facts leading to the complaint, particulars of the application [number, date, name and address of the PIO (three copies)], relief sought, grounds and proof for relief, verification of the complainant (three copies), index of documents referred to in the complaint, and any other necessary information.[3]

Challenges to the Citizen

Knowing the correct Public Information Officer

Knowing which public information officer to mail in the RTI request is the first difficulty that an individual faces. As noted above in 2008 there were a total of 73,256 recorded public information commissioners in the State of Karnataka. New public information commissioners are created every day, because the RTI extends not only to any department of the government, but to any sub-contracted company, organization, school, or NGO that is receiving government funding and doing work on behalf of the government directly or indirectly. Lists of PIOs can be found on department bulletin boards and websites, but there is no clear method for an individual to know what information each PIO is the custodian over. Thus, they are left to determine on their own, and rely on the PIO to forward their application to the correct individual.

Filing in the correct format

Though it is stated in the law what language an RTI request will be accepted in, and what information should be included – individuals are often unaware of the guidelines and unaware of how to correctly fill out an RTI request. An incorrectly formatted request is one of the major reasons for rejection of a request by the PIO.

Language

In the State of Karnataka, RTIs can be filed only in two languages: Kannada and English. By law, RTI responses are given only in the language that the department works in on a daily basis, and in English. The information that is supplied through the request is given in its original language. For example, if you ask for a document that is originally in Marathi, the document will be photo copied and sent to you. No translation of documents takes place, because it is not the job function of the officer to translate documents.

Appeals

If an individual is denied information, or does not receive a reply within 30 days, they have the option of seeking an appeal through an appellate authority. In 2008 Karnataka had 5416 Appellate Authorities. Currently, because of the backlog in appeal cases and the slow functioning of the system, an individual might have to wait for upto one year for his/her appeal to be heard. Often at this point the information is no longer relevant or needed.

Privacy

In some cases individuals are denied a request for information based on the grounds that it would invade the privacy of the public officer. This is sometimes the case and sometimes not the case. Finding the right balance between the right to information and privacy is important, as protecting an individual’s privacy is crucial, but privacy should not be used as a reason for the government to be less transparent to the citizen and be used as a way to deny a citizen the information that they are entitled to.[4]

Challenges in the RTI System for the Government

Too many RTI requests and no system to record duplicates: As the figure shows above, in 2008, the Karnataka Government received 42208 RTI requests. Currently, it is not possible to know how many of these requests were duplicates since departments handling RTIs do not make it a practice to upload and organize filed RTI requests in a format easily accessible to citizens. Thus, there is no present system in place to track, upload, and store past RTI's in a meaningful way.
Additional overhead in recording, organizing, accessing, and storing data: In the current system every time an RTI request is received by the government, they open a new file for that request. Though in some ways this system of storage simplifies the process of finding past RTIs, it adds an additional overhead cost as photocopies must be made, new files created, and correctly added to the organized system. Each state follows its own method of recording, organizing, accessing, and storing data – thus, currently it is not possible to easily access the information from another state or combine information from two separate states.
Lack of compliance with section 4(d) pro-active disclosure: Under section 4 (d), the government is required to pro-actively disclose a pre-determined data to the public via websites and other useful modes. Currently there is very little compliance with section 4(d) from governmental departments. There are many factors that contribute to the low rate of compliance that exist including lack of resources and lack of proper enforcement. If governmental departments were to comply with section 4(d) then the load of RTI requests and the time each request must take to answer could be lightened considerably as the government could respond by pointing citizens to the already disclosed information.

Conclusion

Though the Right to Information is an important right, the above entry looks at some of the weaknesses and challenges in the system. There are many structural changes that both citizens and governmental officers can make to improve the system such as pro-actively disclosing information, ensuring that an RTI is filed correctly, and creating a system for organizing previously asked questions. Alongside of these structural changes it is also critical that a positive culture of transparency and accountability is fostered throughout society, thus encouraging citizens to actively engage with the government and exercise their right to information.

Notes

[1].I am grateful to N. Vikram Simha, RTI activist, for his insight and feedback into the RTI system.

[2].N. Vikram Simha, Right to Information Act of 2005: Guide for Citizens.

[3].N. Vikram Simha, Right to Information: Trend Ahead. Karanataka State Chartered Accountants Association, Bangalore

[4].N. Vikram Simha, RTI and Protection of Individual Privacy

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/understanding-right-to-information

Internet Governance Forum: Participate Remotely

praskrishna — 2011-09-27T05:09:56Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) invites you to attend the sixth annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) as a remote participant from Bangalore. The IGF is being held in Nairobi from 27-30 September 2011. CIS has been registered as a remote IGF hub. This will allow many of us who are unable to attend the IGF in person. You can follow the discussion, watch the web cast of the event, follow real-time closed captioning and participate live (via text or video) that will be answered by panelists in the IGF.

The IGF is a multi-stakeholder forum that addresses public policy issues related to key elements of Internet governance. The overall theme of the meeting will be ‘Internet as a Catalyst for Change: Access, Development, Freedoms and Innovation'. The various themes are as follows:

Internet Governance for Development
Emerging Issues
Managing Critical Internet Resources
Security, Openness and Privacy
Access and Diversity
Taking Stock and the Way Forward

Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of the Centre for Internet and Society, will be participating in the following workshops:

Shyam Ponappa, Fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society, will be presenting remotely for the following workshop:

Open Spectrum for Development in the Context of the Digital Migration

Nishant Shah, Director Research at Centre for Internet and Society, has organized the following workshop:

Use of Digital Technologies for Civic Engagement and Political Change: Lessons Learned and Way Forward

We are not limited to following specific workshops. Please follow the link for more information on workshops of your interest, program details and the schedule:

http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/schedule-a-programme-2011

Participation is free. However, we would be grateful if you could confirm your attendance by emailing Natasha Vaz “natasha@cis-india.org or Tom Dane at “tjdane@gmail.com”. We hope you will join us to watch the web cast and contribute your own insights on the various workshops.

Looking forward to welcoming you at the workshops!

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/igf-remote-participation

Netizen's Guide to the Internet Governance Forum

praskrishna — 2011-09-26T08:59:57Z

The Internet Governance Forum is a multi-stakeholder forum where people from all over the world - from government, industry, the technical community and civil society - come together to discuss the Internet's future. The Sixth Annual meeting officially kicks off on Tuesday morning in Nairobi, Kenya. A number of pre-meetings will be held all day on Monday.

The IGF is set up for remote participation, so you do not need to be in Kenya physically to follow the discussions or to ask questions and make your views known. Before the start of each day, IGF staff will post remote participation links for each conference room so that you can participate remotely through the conference's WEBEX system. (Click here to see if your computer is compatible with their system.)

The Monday pre-meetings: Several interesting and important meetings will be held on Monday and four of them are open to everybody on the Internet. Two of them have made their schedules publicly available and promoted them:

The Association for Progressive Communications meeting on access as a right. (10am-6pm Kenya time). Why attend? Click here for the invitation flyer and click here for the full run-down of the day's discussions. Also see APC's briefing paper on priorities for this year's IGF and other short papers on key IGF discussion themes. The final panel of the day, a Roundtable on the State of Internet Rights (17:15-18:15 local time) will be held jointly with the next group. A guest blogger from APC will be reporting from the meeting here on GVA later this week.
Global Internet Governance Academic Network (Giganet) annual symposium. (also approximately 10am-6pm) Many of the papers or abstracts are available for download. See for instance Arresting the decline of multi-stakeholderism in Internet governance by Jeremy Malcolm; The legality of internet blackouts in times of crisis. An assessment at the intersection of human rights law, humanitarian law and internet governance principles by Matthias Ketteman; and Upholding online anonymity in Internet governance. Affordances, ethical frameworks, and regulatory practices by Robert Bodle.

The main conference: So many sessions, which ones to join? At any given time, several different meetings, workshops, and plenary sessions are held concurrently. The IGF organizers have posted the schedule as a rather unweildy Excel file here. Fortunately, other participants have taken the time to post the schedule in more digestible formats. The Diplo Foundation's e-Diplomacy project has an online list of sessions and schedule. The indefatigable Tim Davies has also created a social media page aggregating all tweets, blogs and photos posted by participants. The official hashtag, by the way, is #IGF11.

If you want to get involved with a global community of people working for Internet users' rights whose work extends throughout the year, be sure to join one or more of the “dynamic coalitions.” Examples include the Internet Rights and Principles Coalition (meeting on Tuesday from 11-12:30 Kenya time) and the Freedom of Expression Coalition (Wednesday 4:30-6pm).

Many participating organizations have posted lists of the workshops they are organizing or participating in on their websites. Those interested in sessions related to activism, human rights and free expression on the Internet may want to check out session listings by the APC (scroll down below the jump), the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Global Network Initiative, and the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, among others.

Kieren McCarthy of dot-nxt has also created a handy practical guide to this year's IGF, with his top session picks. He observes that while the opening session on Tuesday afternoon has “far, far too many speakers,” it will nonetheless be interesting “given all that is happening in the Internet governance world.” No doubt, speeches from Hamadoun Toure (ITU), Neelie Kroes (EC), Janis Karklins (UNESCO), Larry Strickling (US), Rod Beckstrom (ICANN) and Vint Cerf (Google) not be uniform in their visions for the Internet's future.

For those interested in truly doing their homework on the IGF and the current global impasse over Internet governance, see Jeremy Malcolm's post on IGF Watch: Where to develop Internet policy: ITU, G8, OECD or an empowered IGF? Also see his previous posts on twists and turns of the IGF's five-year history.

Written by Rebecca MacKinnon, the story was published in Global Voices Advocacy on 26 September 2011. The original can be read here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/netizen-guide-to-igf

September 2011 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-07-30T06:34:19Z

Greetings from the Centre for Internet and Society! In this issue we are pleased to present you the latest updates about our research, upcoming events, and news and media coverage that happened in the month of September 2011.

Researchers@Work

RAW is a multidisciplinary research initiative. CIS believes that in order to understand the contemporary concerns in the field of Internet and society, it is necessary to produce local and contextual accounts of the interaction between the Internet and socio-cultural and geo-political structures. To build original research base, the RAW programme has been collaborating with different organizations and individuals in order to focus on its two year thematic of Histories of the Internets in India. Five monographs were recently launched at a workshop, Locating Internets: Histories of the Internet(s) in India — Research Training and Curriculum held in Ahmedabad from 19 to 22 August 2011.

Re:Wiring Bodies by Asha Achuthan
The Last Cultural Mile by Ashish Rajadhyaksha
Porn: Law, Video, Technology by Namita A Malhotra
Archives and Access by Aparna Balachandran and Rochelle Pinto
Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities by Pratyush Shankar

Digital Natives with a Cause?

Digital Natives with a Cause? is a knowledge programme initiated by CIS, India and Hivos, Netherlands. It is a research inquiry that seeks to look at the changing landscape of social change and political participation and the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who want to critically engage with the dominant discourse on youth, technology and social change, in order to look at the alternative practices and ideas in the Global South. It also aims at building new ecologies that amplify and augment the interventions and actions of the digitally young as they shape our futures.

Featured Publication

Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? - This collaboratively produced collective, edited by Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen, asks critical and pertinent questions about theory and practice around ‘digital revolutions’ in a post MENA (Middle East - North Africa) world. It works with multiple vocabularies and frameworks and produces dialogues and conversations between digital natives, academic and research scholars, practitioners, development agencies and corporate structures to examine the nature and practice of digital natives in emerging contexts from the Global South.

Book Review

Digital (Alter)Natives with a Cause? — Book Review by Maarten van den Berg - The books come in a beautifully designed cassette and are accompanied by a funky yellow package in the shape of a floppy disk containing the booklet ‘D:coding Digital Natives’, a corresponding DVD, and a pack of postcards portraying the evolution of writing - in the sentence ‘I love you’, written with a goose feather in 1734, to the character set ‘i<3u’ entered on a mobile device in 2011, writes Maarten van den Berg. The review was published in "The Broker" on 19 September 2011.

Event Organised

Digital AlterNatives book launch – CIS and Hivos launched this book at the Museum for Communication, Hague on 16 September 2011.

Accessibility

Estimates of the percentage of the world's population that is disabled vary considerably. But what is certain is that if we count functional disability, then a large proportion of the world's population is disabled in one way or another. At CIS we work to ensure that the digital technologies, which empower disabled people and provide them with independence, are allowed to do so in practice and by the law. To this end, we support web accessibility guidelines, and change in copyright laws that currently disempower the persons with disabilities.

Event Participated

Stakeholders Meeting of the USOF on Facilitating ICT Access to Persons with Disabilities in Rural Areas, on 7 September 2011. Nirmita Narasimhan made a presentation.

Access to Knowledge

Access to Knowledge is a campaign to promote the fundamental principles of justice, freedom, and economic development. It deals with issues like copyrights, patents, and trademarks, which are an important part of the digital landscape. CIS believes that access to knowledge and culture is essential, and such access promotes creativity and innovation, and helps bridge the differences between the developing and developed worlds in a positive manner. Towards this end, CIS is campaigning for an international treaty on copyright exceptions for print-challenged people, advocating against laws (such as the PUPFIP Bill) that privatize public-funded knowledge, call for the WIPO Broadcast Treaty to be restricted to broadcast, question the demonization of 'pirates', and support endeavours that explore and question the current copyright regime.

New Blog Entries

Copyright Amendment Bill in Parliament by Nirmita Narasimhan, 30 August 2011.
Photocopying the past by Sunil Abraham in the Indian Express, 2 September 2011.
Calling Out the BSA on Its BS by Pranesh Prakash, 9 September 2011.

Internet Governance

Internet technologies have fundamentally questioned the notion of governance, not only at the level of administration but also at the level of mechanisms of control, regulation and shaping of the individual. e-Governance initiatives, in combination with other regimes of surveillance, control and censorship, are redefining what it means to be a citizen, a subject, and an individual. We look at questions of governance — at the micro level of the individual and the private (family, relationships, community structures, etc.) as well as the level of governmentality — at the macro level of nation state, citizenship, market economies, and the public (spaces of consumption, work, leisure, political engagement, etc.) under the umbrella of digital governance.

New Blog Entry

Understanding the Right to Information by Elonnai Hickok, 28 September 2011.

Events Organised

Using the Internet as a Tool for Political Change: Lessons Learned and Way Forward, IGF, Nairobi, 27 September 2011.

Telecom

The growth in telecommunications in India has been impressive. While the potential for growth and returns exist, a range of issues need to be addressed for this potential to be realized. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the second aspect is a countrywide access to broadband which is low at about eight million subscriptions. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum. It is imperative to resolve these issues in the common interest of users and service providers.

Articles by Shyam Ponappa

Shyam Ponappa is a Distinguished Fellow at CIS. He writes regularly on Telecom issues in the Business Standard and these articles are mirrored on the CIS website.

Reviving Growth, published in the Business Standard on 1 September 2011.

Event Organised

Open Spectrum for Development in the Context of the Digital Migration, IGF, Nairobi, 29 September 2011.

Miscellaneous

Film Screening

Screening of Partners in Crime, Vikalp@Smriti Nandan along with CIS screened the film and followed it with a discussion with the director of the film, Paromita Vohra, Smriti Nandan Cultural Centre, 9 September 2011.
Prime Security: The Mathematics of RSA Encryption, a one-day workshop with Rohit Gupta, a leading Mathematician.

News & Media Coverage

India's social media "spring" masks forgotten protests [Alistair Scrutton in Reuters, 25 August 2011].
Social media holds the key to Hazare's campaign success [Alistair Scrutton in NEWS.scotsman.com, 26 August 2011].
Digital divide: Why Irom Sharmila can’t do an Anna [FirstPost.Ideas, 25 August 2011].
When revolutions go viral [Times of India (Crescent Edition), 27 August 2011].
IBSA Seminar on Global Internet Governance, organised by the Brazilian Ministry of External Relations, with support from the Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br) and the Center for Technology & Society (CTS/FGV) and governmental and non- governmental actors from India, Brazil and South Africa, 1 to 2 September 2011, Fundacao Getulio Vargas (FGV) - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Pranesh Prakash participated in this event.
Copyrights Amendment Bill to Be Tabled in Indian Parliament – Parallel Import provisions have Been Removed [Mike Palmedo in infojustice.org, 5 September 2011]
The Power of Information: New Technologies for Philanthropy and Development [Indigo Trust, 15 September 2011]. Sunil Abraham participated in this event. A video of his speech is now available on YouTube.
Planning Commission, Census 2011 and India Post using social media to understand people's pulse better [Vikas Kumar in the Economic Times, 20 September 2011]
The Impact of Regulation: FOSS and Enterprise, organised by FOSSFA and ICFOSS, IGF, Nairobi, 28 September 2011.
Privacy, Security, and Access to Rights: A Technical and Policy Analyses, organised by Expression Technologies, IGF, Nairobi, 29 September 2011.
Putting Users First: How Can Privacy be Protected in Today’s Complex Mobile Ecosystem?, organised by GSM Association, 29 September 2011.
The Truman Show, in Kerala [Times of India, posted on CIS website on 23 September 2011].
Making a difference, online and offline [LiveMint, 27 September 2011].

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CIS is grateful to Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/september-2011-bulletin

IBSA Seminar on Global Internet Governance

praskrishna — 2011-09-13T09:53:41Z

The seminar will take place at Fundacao Getulio Vargas (FGV) - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, September 1-2, 2011.

Day 1: September, 1

08.30 - 09.00: Arrival and Accreditation of Participants

09.00 - 10.00: Opening Session

Carlos Ivan Simonsen Leal - President of FGV
Ambassador Luiz Alberto Figueiredo Machado, Undersecretary-General of Environment, Energy, Science and Technology, MRE, Brazil
Ambassador Gilberto Fonseca Guimaraes de Moura, Director of the Department of Inter-regional Mechanisms, MRE, Brazil
Representative of the Government of India - Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) or Department of Information Technology (DIT)
Mr. Moseamo Sebola - Director of Bilateral Relations - Department of Communications (DoC)
Prof. Hartmut Glaser - Brazilian Internet Steering Committee (CGI.br)
Viviana Munoz - South Centre

10.00 - 10.15: Coffee Break

10.15 - 11.15: Session 1: A Diagnosis of the Main Challenges for Developing Countries on the Global Internet Governance Regime (10 Minutes to Each Speaker)

Moderation: Ambassador Benedicto Fonseca Filho, MRE, Brazil

Government of India
DIRCO South Africa
Secretary Romulo Neves, Head of the Division for the Information Society, MRE
Parminder Jeet Singh - IT for Change, India
Carlos Afonso - NUPEF, Brazil
Mark Weinberg - Alternative Information Development Centre, South Africa

11.15 - 12.30: Discussion

12.30 - 14.00 Lunch

14.00 - 1530: Session 2: A Development Agenda for IG: Infrastructure and Critical Internet Resources (10 Minutes to Each Speaker)

Goal: reach a more round understanding about: a) which topics are priority for developing countries; b) what are the policy issues related to them; and c) what could be a future strategy for action.

Moderation: CGI.br

Government of India
DIRCO South Africa
Jeferson Nacif, National Agency of Telecommunications - ANATEL
Pranesh Prakash, Centre for Internet and Society, India
Shaun Pather, Faculty Informatics & Design, Cape Peninsula University of Technology
Joao Brant, Intervozes, Brazil
Carlos Affonso - CTS/FGV, Brazil
Demi Getschko - CGI.br, Brazil

15.30 - 16.15: Discussion

16.15 - 16.30: Coffee Break

16.30 - 17.30: Session 3: Global Online Trade and Services from Developing Countries' Perspective (10 Minutes to Each Speaker)

Moderation: Civil Society Representative (Brazil, India or South Africa)

Government of India
DIRCO South Africa
Antenor Correa, MCTI - Brasil
Artur Coimbra - Ministry of Communications
Pranesh Prakash, Centre for Internet and Society, India
Mark Wienberg, Alternative Information Development, South Africa

17.30 - 18.30: Discussion

18.30 - 20.00: Free Meetings

Day 2: September 2

09.00 - 10.30: Session 4: A Development Agenda for IG: The New Global Information and Communications Systems - Its Rights and Principles (10 Minutes to Each Speaker)

Moderation: CTS/FGV Representative

DIRCO
Government of India
Viviana Munoz - South Centre
Anriette Estherhuysen, APC
Graciela Selaimen - Nupef
Joana Varon (CTS/FGV) - (Approach: Intellectual Property and Access to Knowledge)
Pranesh Prakash, Centre for Internet and Society, India

10.30 - 11.20: Discussion

11.30 - 12.30: Session 5: Institutional Arrangements for Internet Governance and Participation from Developing Countries (10 Minutes to Each Speaker)

Moderation: Ambassador Benedicto Fonseca Filho, MRE, Brazil

Government of India
DIRCO South Africa
Parminder Jeet Singh, IT for Change, India
Marilia Maciel, CTS/FGV, Brazil
Anriette Estherrhuysen, APC, South Africa
Secretary Romulo Neves, Head of the Division for the Information Society, MRE, Brazil

12.30 - 13.20: Discussion

13.20 - 14.30: Lunch

14.30 - 16.00: Taking Stocks and the Way Forward

16.00 - 18.00: Governmental Representatives Meeting - Separated

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

India's social media "spring" masks forgotten protests

praskrishna — 2011-09-01T06:24:38Z

Irom Sharmila has been on hunger strike for 10 years to protest against military abuses, force-fed by tubes through her nose. But the tragedy for the world's longest hunger strike is that she is on the wrong side of India's digital divide.

Twitter, Facebook and aggressive private TV have helped rally India's biggest protests in decades to support civil activist Anna Hazare, a digital groundswell of a wired middle class that echoes the Arab Spring and has taken a Congress party-led government of elderly politicians by surprise.

But Sharmila, who has been on a hunger strike in Manipur to demand an end to the army's sweeping emergency powers there, has only managed a small following, a footnote in media coverage.

"We also once tried to take our fight to New Delhi ... but we did not get support from the rest of the nation," Sharmila told Tehelka magazine.

She must be frustrated. The Hazare phenomenon has rallied Indians from the start with social media. Hazare's India Against Corruption website says it has had 13 million phone calls of support. Its Facebook page has nearly 500,000 "likes".

Its leaders have tweeted each step of the whirlwind crisis, whether describing their arrests in real time or negotiations with the government, outmanoeuvring Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his ministers at every step.

"Protest at PM's residence: 35 people detained, taken to Tughlaq Rd. PS, hundreds still there, come if you can #Janlokpal," twitter user @janlokpal sent its followers in just one example of how the movement was rallying support.

Cases like Sharmila expose the digital divide of Asia's third largest economy and underscore how a growing urban middle class may be getting its political voice heard while millions of poor remain off the digital protest map.

"This is the first time digital social media has resonated with such a large number of people," said Nishant Shah, head of research at the Centre for Internet and Society think-tank.

"But this is far more of a middle class, urban movement, than a national movement. Many people in India are excluded from it."

Twitter and Facebook are barely used in many of India's social causes, including battles over land rights that are one of India's most pressing problems involving millions of farmers.

Huge social issues in India, from caste discrimination to high food prices, from the building of dams to protests by farmers against nuclear power plants, have failed to create the kind of digital mobilisation that Hazare enjoys.

A Digital Divide

India's internet users have grown 1,400 percent between 2000 and 2010, behind only China and Vietnam among Asian countries, according to a report by Burson-Marsteller, a consulting firm.

But that masks India's low base. Internet penetration is around 8 percent in India, the lowest among major Asian countries. That compares with nearly 40 percent in China.

Out of a population of 1.2 billion, there are only 29 million people active in digital social networks. A report by Maplecroft consultancy warned that India was lagging other BRICs, Brazil, China and Russia in "digital inclusion".

"India, for example, the wealthier, more affluent segment of the population, primarily based in urban areas, has embraced the use of modern communications technology," the report said.

"The vast majority of the population has, however, been excluded from this process."

Those statistics highlight that while the middle class has found a voice, electorally the centre-left Congress party will still need to pander to its traditional vote base of millions of farmers and poor Indians ahead of a 2014 general election.

Congress, in power for most of the life of independent India, has failed to use social media tools. One minister lost his job for tweeting too frankly, in a sign of government unease over the web, and the party lags behind an opposition that has embraced Twitter.

Libya Overshadowed

So far, private TV channels have provided 24-hour coverage of the protests -- the news from Libya is hardly to be seen. Urban Indians with mobile phones in hand have dominated rallies in the open grounds where Hazare was on his second week of fasting.

Small protests across the country, from demonstrations outside ministers' houses to rallies outside metro stations, have been organised through Twitter and Facebook.

An app that can be downloaded on to smartphones running the Android operating system gives users the latest news on the campaign for a tough "Jan lokpal", or anti-corruption bill, and details of the latest meetings.

"Social media has been huge for us, it has a life of its own," said Shazia Ilmi, in charge of Hazare media strategy.

Even before Hazare was arrested last week, organisers had prepared a pre-recorded video from him that went on YouTube.

The movement does have deep roots and social media has widened the protests, if not caused them. Many of Hazare's protests have also been through word of mouth. Corruption also affects the poor more than middle classes with endemic bribes, whether permission for street food stands or driving licences.

"It's not an up and down, national movement. It is largely a middle class cause," said Sagarika Ghose, a novelist and journalist at the CNN-IBN news television channel.

"But it's hugely important one. For a younger generation, corruption has become a catch-all phrase for the failure of development."

Some activists are already criticising Hazare as a hype of an elitist social media.

"Those thronging the Ramlila grounds or marching in support of Anna in the metros are not necessarily 'the people' of the country, and it is dangerous to take the two as identical," academic Prabhat Patnaik wrote in The Hindu newspaper.

(Editing by Paul de Bendern and Alex Richardson)

This article by Alistair Scrutton was published in Reuters on 25 August 2011.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/social-media-masks-forgotten-protests