We are anonymous, we are legion

The seedy underbelly of revenge porn

praskrishna — 2015-09-27T14:25:43Z

Intimate photos posted by angry exes are becoming part of an expanding online body of dirty work.

The article by Sandhya Soman was published in the Times of India on August 23, 2015.

Three lakh 'Likes' aren't easy to come by. But Geeta isn't gloating. She's livid, and waiting for the day a video-sharing site will take down the popular clip of her having sex with her vengeful ex-husband. "Every other day somebody calls or messages to say they've seen me," says Geeta.

She is not alone. Two weeks ago, law student Shrutanjaya Bhardwaj Whatsapped women he knew asking if any of them had come across cases of online sexual harassment. In a few hours, his phone was filled with tales of harassment by ex-boyfriends and strangers. Instances ranged from strangers publishing morphed photographs on Facebook, to ex-husbands and boyfriends circulating intimate photos and videos on porn sites. Of the 40 responses, around 25 were cases of abuse by former partners. "I have heard friends talking about the problem, but never realized it was this bad," says Bhardwaj.

These days, revenge is best served online - it travels faster and has potential for greater damage. But despite the widespread nature of the crime, many targets hesitate to complain for fear of being shamed and blamed. "A 15-year-old girl is going to worry about how her parents will react if she talks about it," says Chinmayi Arun, research director, Centre for Communication Governance at Delhi National Law University. There is also fear of harassment by the police, says Rohini Lakshane, researcher, Centre for Internet and Society. Worst of all is the waiting. "Even if a police complaint is filed, it takes ages to find out who shot it, who uploaded it and where it is circulated. Such content is mirrored across many sites," she says.

Geeta is familiar with the routine. Her harassment started with photographs sent to family, friends and colleagues. After an acrimonious divorce, several videos were released in 2013. "There were some 25-30 videos on various sites.

After an FIR was filed, the police wrote to websites and some of the links were removed," says Geeta, who has been flagging content on a popular site, which has not yet responded to her privacy violation report. "My face is seen clearly on it. People even come up to me in restaurants saying they've seen it. How do I get on with my life?" asks a distraught Geeta. She also recently filed an affidavit supporting the controversial porn ban PIL in a last-ditch effort to erase the abuse that began after her divorce.

The cyber cell officer in charge of her case says he had got websites to shut down several URLs but was thwarted by the repeal of section 66A of the IT Act that dealt with offensive messages sent electronically. When asked why section 67 (cyber pornography) of the same act and various sections in the criminal law couldn't be used, the officer says that only 66A is applicable to the evidence he has. "I asked for more links and she sent them to me. We'll see if other sections can be applied," he says. Lawyers and activists, argue that existing laws are good enough like sections 354A (sexual harassment), 354C (voyeurism), 354D (stalking) and 509 (outraging modesty) of the IPC.

Though there are no official statistics for what is popularly referred to as 'revenge' porn, there is a flood of such images online. Lakshane, who studied consent in amateur pornography for the NGO-run EroTICs India project in 2014, found clandestinely shot clips to exhibitionist ones where faces are blurred or cropped.

Social activist Sunita Krishnan has raised the red flag over several video clips, including two that show gang rape, which were circulated on Whatsapp. Some of the content she came across showed familiarity between the man and woman, indicating an existing relationship. In one clip, the man says: "How dare you go with that fellow. What you did it to him, do it to me."

Most home-grown clips end up on desi sites with servers abroad, making it difficult to take down content. Some do have a policy of asking for consent of people in the frame. But Lakshane, who wanted to test this policy, says when she approached one website that has servers abroad saying that she had a sexually explicit video, the reply was a one-liner asking her to send it. "They didn't ask for any consent emails," she says. In lieu of payment, they offered her a free account on another file-sharing site, which seemed to partner with the site. With no financial links to those submitting videos, sites like these make money out of subscriptions from consumers, or ads.

A few months ago, the CBI arrested a man from Bengaluru for uploading porn clips, using high-end editing software and cameras. Kaushik Kuonar allegedly headed a syndicate and was supposed to be behind the rape clips reported by Krishnan. "I am skeptical of the idea of amateur porn being randomly available across the Internet. There seem to be people like the man in Bengaluru who are apparently sourcing, distributing and making money out of it," says Chinmayi Arun. "He had 474 clips, including some of rape," adds Krishnan.

Social media companies, meanwhile, say they're working with authorities to prevent such violations. Facebook spokesperson says the company removes content that violates its community standards. It also works with the women and child development ministry to help women stay safe online. Google, Microsoft, Twitter and Reddit have promised to remove links to revenge porn on request, while countries like Japan and Israel have made it illegal.

In India, the National Commission for Women started a consultation on online harassment but is yet to submit a report. In the absence of clarity, activists like Krishnan endorse the banning of porn sites. Not all agree with sweeping solutions. Lakshane says sometimes a court order helps to get tech companies to act faster on requests as in the case of a 2012 sex tape scandal where Google removed search results to 360 web pages. Also, the term 'revenge' porn, she says, is a misnomer as the videos are meant to shame women. "These are not movies where actors get paid. Somebody else is making money off this gross violation of privacy."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-times-of-india-sandhya-soman-august-23-2015-the-seedy-underbelly-of-revenge-porn

The Second IJLT-CIS Lecture Series at National Law School, Bangalore

praskrishna — 2011-05-13T11:03:04Z

The Indian Journal of Law and Technology and the Centre for Internet and Society, present the second IJLT- CIS Lecture Series, an event comprised of an intensive series of lectures by luminaries with expertise in law and technology to give students, professionals and anyone interested in a comprehensive idea about the theme, "Emerging Issues in Privacy law".

The focus will be on contemporary sub-issues of critical relevance such as:

The Unique Identification Project and Challenges to Privacy
Cloud Computing and Behavioural Tracking
The State and Privacy: Electronic Surveillance

Speakers

The following delegates would be speaking at the conference:

Usha Ramanathan
Malavika Jayaram
Vivek Durai
Prof. Sudhir Krishnaswamy

Profiles of the Speakers

Usha Ramanathan

Dr. Usha Ramanathan is an internationally recognized expert on law and poverty. She studied law at Madras University, the University of Nagpur and Delhi University. She is a frequent adviser to non-governmental organisations and international organizations. She is a member of Amnesty International's Advisory Panel on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and has been called upon by the World Health Organisation as a expert on mental health on various occasions. Her research interests include human rights, displacement, torts and environment. She has published extensively in India and abroad.

Malavika Jayaram

Malavika Jaya has an experience of more than 15 years as a lawyer with a specialization in information technology and intellectual property. She is a partner in Jayaram & Jayaram, Bangalore managing a portfolio of work that has a strong focus on IT/IP and commercial work, especially with an international angle and is a fellow of the Centre for Internet and Society. She works with CIS in its efforts to explore, understand, and affect the shape and form of the Internet, and its relationship with the cultural and social milieu of our time.

More info on Malavika Jayaram can be found here

Vivek Durai

Vivek G Durai is co-founder and managing partner at Atman Law Partners. He represents Indian and overseas clients in connection with their India entry strategies, venture capital and private equity investments, infrastructure projects, technology contracts, procurement and supply agreements and real estate investments.

More info on Vivek Durai can be found here

Professor (Dr.) Sudhir Krishnaswamy

Prof. Sudhir Krishnaswamy graduated from National Law School Bangalore with a BA LLB (Hons) degree. He then went onto finish a BCL and DPhil in Law from the University of Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. He has taught at National Law School, Bangalore and Pembroke College, University of Oxford among other places. His research interests include constitutional law, administrative law, intellectual property law, legal profession and reform of the legal system.

More info on Prof. Krishnaswamy can be found here

Admission will not charged but in order to enable us to ensure adequate seating, do register without fail by the 18th of May by email at editorialboard@ijlt.in.

Updates regarding the conference will be posted here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/ijlt-cis-lecture-series

The scariest bill in Parliament is getting no attention – here’s what you need to know about it

sunil — 2015-09-13T07:56:42Z

A bill proposes creation of a national DNA data bank, without requisite safeguards for privacy, and opens the information to everything from civic disputes to compilation of statistics.

The blog post by Nayantara Narayanan was published in Scroll.in on July 24, 2015.

On Wednesday, the Narendra Modi government told the Supreme Court that India's citizens have no fundamental right to privacy. Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi referred to a 1950 court verdict which held that the right to privacy was not a fundamental right while defending the constitutional validity of the Aadhar scheme, a massive database of information of individual citizens including biometrics and bank accounts. At the same time, the government is planning another big database.

In the ongoing stormy monsoon session of Parliament, where the government and opposition have locked horns over several proposed legislation, Human DNA Profiling Bill 2015 has been making little noise but can have widespread impact on India’s criminal justice system and the privacy of citizens. The bill aims to regulate the collection and use of genetic material from crime scenes, and also proposes the creation of a national DNA databank that might be used for non-forensic purposes.

DNA is a mighty tool, especially in criminal forensics, but access to a person’s genetic information can be highly intrusive and dangerous. DNA contains information about health and genetic relationships that can influence employment, insurance. It can be tampered with and planted at crime scenes.

Law and poverty expert Usha Ramanathan and Centre for Internet and Society executive director Sunil Abraham, who are members of an expert committee on DNA profiling constituted by the government, have written dissent notes against the final draft of the Human DNA Profiling Bill. Ramanathan and Abraham are of the opinion that there aren’t adequate safeguards to privacy and too much power rests with the proposed DNA Profiling Board.

Ramanathan notes that one of the biggest challenges of a DNA database is function creep – the gradual widening of the use of a technology beyond the purpose for which it was originally intended. As this DNA profiling bill enters Parliament, here are some questions we should be asking.

Is DNA evidence infallible?

The short answer is “no”. Despite all the crime shows and murder movies we have seen where DNA evidence nails the perpetrator to the crime, DNA evidence is far from absolute. Genetic material recovered from a crime scene is likely to be only a partial strand of DNA. Analysing this partial strand can lead to a match with the person that left the DNA behind but can also lead to a coincidental match with people who happen to have a similar gene sequence in their DNA. False incriminations can happen when more than one person’s DNA get mixed at the crime scene, from DNA contamination, mislabelling and even degradation over time.

In the Aarushi Talwar murder case, for instance, the Hyderabad-based Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics altered its 2008 report in 2013 and admitted to typographical errors in the description of its DNA samples. The evidence could have changed the course of the investigation.

What will the national DNA database look like?

The bill proposes to set up a national DNA data bank and a number of state or regional data banks that will feed into the national data pool. Every data bank will have six categories under which DNA profiles will be filed – crime scene index, suspects’ index, offenders’ index, missing persons’ index, unknown deceased persons’ index, and volunteers’ index. The DNA profiling board will have the power to include more categories. In the offenders’ index, the DNA information will be linked to the name of the person from whom it was collected. All others will be linked to a case reference number.

What happens when my genetic material is on the database?

The bill gives sanction for broad use of DNA profiles and samples – to identify victims of accidents or disasters, to identify missing persons, for civil disputes and other offences. It also allows the information to be used to create population statistics, identification research, parental disputes, issues relating to reproductive technologies and migration. In his dissent note, Abraham argues that all non-forensic use should be rejected.

Cases like whether paternity should be determined, unwed mothers leaving their children and adopted children looking for their natural parents are hugely contestable things, said Ramanathan. “You are changing multiple structures and not recognising any of them,” she added.

Even though the bill allows for DNA information of offenders to be expunged once a court acquits them or sets aside a conviction, it makes no provision for removing other kinds of profiles.

The CDFD, which will be instrumental in building and processing DNA profiles, is using the CODIS software bought from the US's Federal Bureau of Investigation an compatible with their systems. The FBI used CODIS to identify victims of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. More recently, the CDFD used CODIS to identify some who died in the Uttarakhand floods of 2013 after asking for 5,000 people who were possibly relatives of the deceased to undertake DNA testing.

Can the DNA profiling board protect our genetic information?

The bill grants the board vast powers to allow the use of DNA profiles in any civil and criminal proceedings that it deems necessary. “Ideally these powers would lie with the legislative or judicial branch,” Abraham said, in his dissent note. “Furthermore, the Bill establishes no mechanism for accountability or oversight over the functioning of the Board.”

Ramanathan questions the constitution of the board itself, her worry being that the board is not a body of disinterested officials. The secretary of the board is supposed to be from the Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, an autonomous institute that will get a lot of work from the creation of the national DNA data bank.

Why does a DNA fingerprinting consent form ask for caste?

One of the most troubling features of the creation of a databank is the consent form to be signed by a person donating blood for DNA analysis. Along with name, gender and address, the form also asks for caste to be listed.

India has a history of unwarrantedly linking caste and community with criminality. Members of decriminalised tribes regularly report being harassed by the police and even having false cases foisted on them simply because they are linked to a certain community. Tagging caste onto genetic data can result in unfair profiling and identification errors.

The United Kingdom set up its national criminal DNA database in 1995. The database expanded over a decade by including genetic information of anyone who was arrested till more than one million innocent people were on it – including a grandmother who didn’t return a football to children who kicked it into her garden. The dangers of a genetic database are too much state oversight, false implication in crimes and a loss of privacy – none of which should come to pass without at least a debate.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-scariest-bill-in-parliament-is-getting-no-attention-2013-here2019s-what-you-need-to-know-about-it

The Rules of Engagement

nishant — 2015-04-24T11:48:54Z

Why the have-nots of the digital world can sometimes be mistaken as trolls. I am not sure if you have noticed, but lately, the people populating our social networks have started to be more diverse than before.

Nishant Shah's column was published in the Indian Express on October 29, 2012.

Oh, sure, we are still talking about a fairly middle-class hang-out that happens largely in English and is restricted to people in urban environments who have the economic and cultural capital of access. But if you browse through your friends’ lists and compare it with, say, the network from five years ago, you will realise that the age demography has changed quite dramatically. I am not suggesting that the Web was only the realm of the young – let us face it, the people who actually created the infrastructure of the Web were not tiny tots. However, with Web 2.0 at the turn of the millennium, we have had an extraordinary focus on young people online.

But as the networks grow to include more people, there are now a lot of people online, who might not be the 16-year-old BlackBerry-wielding digital native, nor be in the “business of internet” but are finding a space for themselves, tentatively and steadily negotiating with this new space. Some of it might be because, those of us who were new kids on the block in the Nineties, are now older by a decade and are still on the block, but replaced by newer kids around the block. Some of it might be because there is an ease of access as portable computing devices grow more personal and get more people to use their smartphones as a gateway into the online worlds. But a lot of it is actually because the fold of the Web is expanding. The digital spaces of conversation are being integrated into our everyday lives and practices, replacing older forms of media and information structures and processes of social and cultural belonging.

And so, even though the penetration of the interwebz is not as rapid in countries like India as one would have hoped for, we do see a wide age group of people coming online, forming networks, and entering into conversations. I hadn’t really realised this, even though I was adding them to my social networks, that the digital immigrants are now here, and they are here to stay. It suddenly surfaced in my thoughts, because I recently heard a few narratives which made me dwell on the effort and the learning that one takes for granted but is a prerequisite for belonging to these new social spaces.

One of the first complaints I heard was about a hostility that many digital immigrants face when they start engaging with the social media. They follow the manuals. They read the FAQs. They look at patterns, and learn. And yet, even when they seem to be doing what seems to be exactly what everybody else is doing, they are often told that they got it all wrong. This is bewildering for many, because they cannot really see the difference. And the reason is that the social web is governed by a whole lot of unwritten rules and codes, which clearly are the rites of passage into the online world. These are not things that can be taught. These are not written in a guideline that tells you how to behave on Facebook or how to sift through the live-streams on Twitter. It is a fiercely guarded set of dos and don’ts which clearly distinguish between the digital natives and the digital immigrants, reinforcing exclusivity and exclusion. And when the digital immigrant violates these rules, they are often faced with a sneer, a sarcastic comment, or a dismissal as “not with it”.

The second thing I have repeatedly noticed is “calling troll” to people who do not always know these rules. Trolling is not new to the world of the internet. People who disrupt conversations and discussions by posting provocative or tangential information, by voicing hateful opinions, by passing harsh judgments, or sometimes by willfully breaking the rules of the communities, in order to seek attention and interrupt the flow of conversations are called trolls. Trolls are universally frowned upon and trolling wars often take up epic proportions because people get emotionally invested in them. Trolls are often shamed publicly, their mistakes brought into an embarrassing spot-light and ridiculed in back-channels or even in public discussions.

Calling somebody a troll presumes that the user is conversant with the rules of the game and is then breaking them, working with the idea that if you are online, you are naturally a digital native. The digital immigrants often create noob mistakes that can appear troll-like but are not intended to be so, and are often on the receiving end of a community’s hostility. And it is time, now that our online networks are growing, for us to realise that our presumptions about who is online need to change. If we are looking at an inclusive Web, we need to stop imagining that the person on the other side of the interface is necessarily like us, and develop new networks of nurture, which allows the digital immigrants safe spaces to experiment, make mistakes, and learn like the best of us. The next time, before you call somebody a troll, see if it might just be somebody learning the tricks of the trade. If they are doing something wrong, just politely point it out to them. And remember, acceptance is not only for people who are like us, but about people who are markedly unlike us.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/blog/india-express-news-nishant-shah-oct-29-2012-the-rules-of-engagement

The Rising Stars in Music Loath Losing their Only Platform

Umar Shah and Mir Farhat — 2017-12-21T15:59:24Z

Strap: The music from Kashmir wants to find a way out, but shutting internet down only adds to the bitterness.

Srinagar, J&K: Amid the gaudy Old City area of Srinagar, where the air is heavy with the pungent smell of teargas shells, 25-year-old Ali Saifuddin has been busy working on compositions that he will perform at a prominent indie music festival in Pune in December 2017. Pune may be discovering Saifuddin’s music only now, but he has performed in Dubai and London too, owing to the fanbase he has garnered on social media.


Mehmeet Syed’s popularity on social media has taken her to countries like US, UK, Australia and Abu Dhabi (Picture Courtesy: Mehmeet Syed Facebook page)	Umar Majeed shot to fame with his rendition of Pakistan’s national anthem on the Santoor		Yawar Abdal, a Kashmiri singer, says he doesn’t see the logic behind keeping the internet shut for months (Picture Courtesy: Yawar Abdal Facebook Page)

It was in 2014 when the budding musician bought recording gear and created a Facebook page. Hours after uploading his first video, Saifuddin became an internet sensation. “I was stunned to see thousands of views on Facebook. People who I had never met with hailed my tunes and encouraged me to produce more,” Saifuddin says.

With 9,000 followers on Instagram and more than 6,000 ‘likes’ on his Facebook page, Saifuddin often gets offers to perform outside Kashmir.

“(As an artist) you need a platform, and in Kashmir, it is the internet that sides with you,” says Yawar Abdal, another popular Youtuber, whose song Tamanna has garnered over 400,000 views since June. “I uploaded a minute-long video on Facebook in April last year. It became viral and made me famous,” Abdal says.

The 23-year-old Pune University student has more than 13,000 followers on Instagram and above 10,000 likes on Facebook. “There are no shows organised in Kashmir. Internet is the only platform where people can broadcast what they posses,” he says.

Frequent curfews, even online, are like a curse for Kashmiris. Internet services are being clamped down in the Valley quite often, particularly after the killing of militant leader Burhan Wani on July 8. Wani’s killing sparked violent protests resulting in the deaths of 15 civilians the very next day. The clashes killed 383 people - including 145 civilians, 138 militants and 100 state and Central security personnel - and around 15,000 others were injured. While many were also put under illegal detention following the outbreak of deadly violence, the government suspended internet for more than six months in 2016.

In such a scenario, where shutdowns are stretching from streets to the social media, it is not surprising to see Kashmiris voice their dissent through art whenever they find a window open. In 2017, internet services were blocked 27 times across various districts of the Valley, either on mobile, or on both mobile and broadband, in the hope that it prevents rumour mongering and instigation of violence.

“This is unnatural and tantamount to choking a person’s right to free speech,” says Saifuddin, who has been criticising the human rights violations in Kashmir with songs that carry a political undertone. Son of medical doctors based in UK, Saifuddin got initiated to rock music through Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin during school days, before heading to Delhi University for a BA degree in 2011. “There I found the treasure of music. I finally had a computer and an internet connection. Youtube became my first, and so far, the only teacher,” recalls Saifuddin. His songs on Youtube include Aye Raah-e-Haq Ke Shaheedon, Phir Se Hum Ubharaygay, and Manzoor Nahi - a song he posted to protest against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Kashmir in November 2015.

For Mehmeet Syed, whose music was limited to CDs since 2004, internet opened new avenues. Her popularity on social media has taken her to countries like US, UK, Australia and Abu Dhabi among others. “Being on social media is very important as it lets people stay updated about my work. My popularity touched new heights after I took to the internet,” says Syed, who owns a verified Facebook page with more than 1.20 lakh followers. On Instagram, she is a novice. But an internet ban means “heartbreak” to her. “Internet is not shut down in other places witnessing violence and conflict…We are very unfortunate to face internet bans,” says Syed.

“As singers, we have to record songs, mail them for editing, or receive content from studio. Without internet, we are stuck, paralysed,” she says.

Explaining how internet is more than a means of free expression, Mehmeet says, “Times have changed. This is the era of iTunes and YouTube. The songs we release in Kashmir are watched online across the globe. And this is how you earn today.”

The freedom to share content has empowered even the marginalised lot who were only known locally for their talent. Abdul Rashid, a transgender wedding singer popular as ‘Reshma’ in Srinagar’s Old City, became an online sensation after one of her wedding songs was widely viewed on Facebook, and media followed up with stories around her.

“Nobody knew me outside my locality. But today, I get calls from across Kashmir to sing on weddings. This became possible through Facebook. It gave me wide publicity,” Reshma says.

Umar Majeed, a Class 12 student from Zainakoot in Srinagar, is keeping the folk tradition of Kashmir alive with the help of internet. While the 19-year-old inherited skills on Santoor from his father, Abdul Majeed, it was social media that propelled him to fame. Umar played the national anthem of Pakistan on Santoor, accompanied by two other musicians on Rabaab. “The instrumental composition was viewed 450,000 times in two days,” says Umar, adding that they are working on a musical theme of the Indian national anthem as well.

With 5,000 friends on Facebooķ and 2,500 followers on Instagram, Umar has a quite wide network for a schoolkid. “We get a lot of encouragement and confidence when people comment on and appreciate our work online,” he says. But repeated internet ban keeps the young musician away from the much needed feedback.

“When I get an idea, I instantly compose it on Santoor and upload it on Facebook to get viewers’ response… But when there is internet ban, I have no mood to play even when I get an idea, and soon I forget it,” he says.

Mehmeet points out that internet not only promises freedom of expression but also provides monetary support to indie artists through platforms like iTunes, Google Play, Pandora, Amazon and Sawaan. She has been generating revenue to support her music through 21 of her tracks uploaded on these platforms, Mehmeet says.

The repeated shutdown of internet during the Republic Day and Independence Day also sends a wrong message to Kashmiris, says Mehmeet. “We realise that such attitude is step-motherly, which is unacceptable. And we as Kashmiris have not yet reached the stage where we think we have got independence.” Saifuddin seconds her sentiments. “If it is a democracy, then I have a right to speak my heart out. Why would the government choke my voice?” he asks.

When asked if the clamping down of internet service affects his music and earning, Saifuddin retorts poetically: “If not for the internet, I wouldn’t be around. So yes, it pains to see Kashmir being sealed on streets and on the cyberspace as well.

“It makes you angry at times to see things that happen nowhere but in Kashmir.”

Abdal, on the contrary, wants his music to be apolitical. “I sing the songs of Sufi saints and strive to rejuvenate the dying Kashmiri music,” he says.

But, the ban on internet services leaves him perturbed. “Without listeners, you begin losing interest. I hope one day the government understands that there is no logic in keeping the internet shut for weeks and months,” says Abdal, adding that he also observes a drop in demand for live gigs in the absence of internet.

“When you have a lot to share, but the medium through which you could take it to people is blocked, discomfort is what you’re left with.”

Umar Shah and Mir Farhat are Srinagar-based freelance writers and members of 101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters.

Shutdown stories are the output of a collaboration between 101 Reporters and CIS with support from Facebook.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/the-rising-stars-in-music-loath-losing-their-only-platform

The rise of India’s typography community

Admin — 2017-08-07T15:17:25Z

Meet India’s typography community, as they adapt regional language scripts for the digital age and take their passion mainstream.

Seven hundred and eighty languages and 400 scripts: that’s the number the People’s Linguistic Survey of India identified in 2013. Of these, how many scripts do we see daily? Giving text a unique ‘voice’ are typefaces and fonts, created by type designers across the world. It’s safe to say that India is a prime player in this market because of the sheer number of languages we have. Satya Rajpurohit, founder of Ahmedabad-based Indian Type Foundry (ITF), knows this all too well. His family of fonts, called Kohinoor, is what your Apple device is probably displaying every time you look at regional text.

Innovate and experiment

“Designing Indic fonts is tricky; languages that have nothing in common script-wise — like Hindi and Gujarati — should complement each other,” he explains. After getting a global brand to license ITF’s fonts (his other clients include Google, Samsung and Sony), he invested $3 million of his own money in creating fontstore.com, India’s first subscription-based model. Launched early July, he says, “It works like Netflix for fonts: pay a monthly commitment of around $15 and use as many as you need. Within the first month, we’ve had 300 subscribers.” It took 35 designers working for two years to design the commissioned fonts that are available exclusively on the site; more will be added periodically to expand the library.

This propensity to innovate is not uncommon among the Indian type community. Shiva Nallaperumal from Chennai was on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list this year, for being the youngest Indian recipient, at 24, of the SOTA (Society of Typographic Aficionados) Catalyst Award. A graduate of Maryland Institute College of Art, USA, he recently launched Calcula, his latest experimental typeface, in collaboration with a Dutch type foundry, Typotheque. “It also involved coding (done by a partner), as it engineers itself while you type to fit into the letters on either side. It was just a project in pushing boundaries; now, the market will have to find uses for it,” he shares.

Going public

Today, the interest in Indic types is on the rise, thanks to this emerging community of designers. Public demonstrations are also fuelling curiosity. “In Delhi, we organise Typerventions, where we meet common people in a public space and make font installations,” says designer Pooja Saxena, who created a Santhali font. These interventions include writing words with pieces of watermelon and stencilling the word “petrichor” on the road in water and watching it evaporate in the Delhi heat. “There are also typography boot camps and workshops in March, around World Typography Day,” she says, which are surprisingly well-attended.

In Mumbai, type design studio Mota Italic, run by Rob Keller and Kimya Gandhi, organises Typostammtisch (pronounced too-poe-shtaam-tish) events — there’s one happening today at 5 pm at the Doolally Taproom in Colaba. Groups of at least 30 people come together for each meet, invariably held at a pub and featuring lively show-and-tell presentations and games using regional script. “This week, we’ve planned a Type Tour of India,” says Keller.

Latin vs Indic

Regional languages in India were first set to type by the British, which resulted in some bastardisation of the script. Nallaperumal explains, “South Indian scripts are written with a scribe, so it is a single line with no contrast. Devanagiri is more calligraphic because of the pens they are written with. The person who made the first Tamil fonts did not get that. He applied the calligraphic logic to our languages, resulting in varying thickness in each character, which actually does not exist.” But it’s too late to go back to the original, as people wouldn’t be able to recognise it, feel the designers. “We need to improve what people are comfortable with right now. Designing one Indian typeface is more difficult than Latin. With English, you’re done with 26 letters; Indian languages have around 800 characters each, most of which are complicated,” says Rajpurohit.

Regional type was also constrained by the cost of the technology involved, and restricted to the machines that were used to develop them. Aurobind Patel, design consultant for leading Indian and UK newspapers, says, “Font development is now much more accessible, and thanks to smartphones, there’s a need for type that translates the same way across devices. Google has pumped in enormous amounts of money to create fonts, even in dying languages that literally have a handful of readers to ensure that any search that pops up on their engine looks authentic.” However, the challenge in creating typefaces for uncommon Indic languages is immense. Saxena knows the difficulties all too well, as she worked for two and a half years to design the Santhali font, commissioned by The Centre for Internet and Society (they were creating a Wikipedia site in the language). “It needed a lot of hands-on research, looking at old printing materials, talking to readers and writers, getting their feedback on how it should look,” she says.

On the web

The growth of Indic is, unsurprisingly, coming at a most opportune time. While a 1997 study by Babel, a joint initiative of the Internet Society and Montreal-based Alis Technologies, showed that in the mid 1990s English made up almost 80% of the Internet, today, according to internetworldstats.com, that’s down to 30%. A paper presented at a social media conference in Barcelona in 2011 found that 49% of all tweets were in languages other than English. And, closer home, a NASSCOM-Akmai Technologies report released last August said that by 2020, there will be an estimated 730 million Internet users in India — and of the new users, 75% will access it from rural India, and a similar number will engage using local languages.

Sarang Kulkarni, founder of EkType, a Mumbai-based foundry that focuses on Indian type, explains, “These numbers are attracting international attention: around 25 countries are developing Indian typefaces, including China.”

Looking back

Earlier this year, the story of designer Robert Green and the beautiful Doves Type that he recovered from the bottom of the Thames River was doing the rounds on social media. In 2016, designer Steve Welsh ran a Kickstarter campaign to revive a font called Euclid — it is now called Lustig Elements, after its designer. “Many familiar typefaces in use today are preserved or were revived from earlier eras. Baskerville and Garamond — eighteenth and sixteenth century typefaces, respectively — were revived at the beginning of the 20th century. Then there are updated derivatives of old types, like the ubiquitous Times New Roman, which itself is a hybrid of Robert Granjon’s 16th century designs and (again) Baskerville,” says Green, on what we can learn from older types.

While there is not much revival of fonts happening in India — considering that our history of type goes back a couple of centuries, it’s understandable — typography has made its way into pop culture. At EkType, Kulkarni has worked with Hanif Kureshi, of Kyoorius Designyatra, to digitise hand-painted lettering, thus preserving the typographic practice of street painters around the country. “As technology advances, 3D typefaces can be used online and in word processing software as well,” says Kulkarni.

In the classroom

Education in type design, including at University of Reading’s MA Typeface Design course, is Latin-centric. “We are not taught to design in Indian script. There might be a small workshop, but in formal education we are only taught to design in English,” says Saxena, an MATD graduate.

Vaibhav Singh, another Reading scholar, who has designed fonts for Adobe, agrees. “Young designers require reliable sources of information to inform their practice and those are few and far between,” he says. Stating that historical research is patchy at the moment, he feels postgraduate and doctoral theses coming from design schools are beginning to form a base for future work. “Histories of printing usually steer clear of technology, design, and production – and this is an area where interdisciplinary collaboration will add to our knowledge of India’s typographic history,” he says.

To this end, Singh has started a publishing imprint and a journal called Contextual Alternate, launching next year, to address the lack of scholarly research.

Pop goes the type

Brands like Mumbai-based Kulture Shop have made typography cool; they also function as a collective, with over 40 artists contributing to the designs on six product lines. Co-founder Kunal Anand says, “Typography and words have a way of cutting through the noise. You can show an image that can capture a thousand words but when you say something using typography, the subtleties of a letter can change the word entirely.” He adds that people can link their identity to typography, literally wearing it on their sleeve. Kochi-based Teresa George, who runs ViaKerala and the Malayalam Project, says that when it comes to Kerala, script is enmeshed in the culture. “Type can be an extension of who we are. For the younger generation, it’s a way of connecting to their roots,” she says.

This kind of interest is important, as the type we see around us is ubiquitous, says Mahendra Patel, former principal designer at National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.

“The simple life is the most difficult life. Within the limitations that older foundries had, they created beautiful types. Now in the digital age, we have a certain sense of responsibility towards these classical and historical fonts, and it’s important to go back and revive them. At the same time, there are plenty of new fonts coming out. For me, both are right. There is enough space for both revival and new approaches.”

Basics of type design

Typeface is a collection of fonts: the former is like an album, the latter, the songs. For example, Helvetica is a typeface and Helvetica Bold is a font.

Fonts are designed based on what they are going to be used for. This includes the spacing between each letter combination, and the height and length of the ascenders and descenders.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-hindu-susanna-myrtle-lazarus-august-4-2017-the-rise-of

The rise of AI in Indian healthcare industry: An innovative asset to the rescue

Admin — 2018-08-06T02:40:50Z

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly increasing with the growth of start-ups and large Information and Communications Technology (ICT) companies that offer AI healthcare solutions for healthcare challenges in India.

The blog post was published by Media India Group on June 27, 2018. CIS research was quoted.

There is an uneven ratio of skilled doctors to patients in our country. According to the Indian Journal of Public Health (2017 edition), India had 4.8 practicing doctors per 10,000 population. It is expected to grow to 6.9 per 10,000 people by the year 2030, but the minimum doctor to patient ratio recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO) is 1:1000. AI is an effective measure to tackle challenges like the uneven ratio, making doctors more skilled at their jobs, catering to rural areas for a high-quality healthcare, training doctors and nurses to tackle complex procedures.

How does AI in healthcare function?

AI in the healthcare sector is a range of technologies that enable machines to sense, comprehend, act and learn so that they can carry out administrative and healthcare functions, be used in research and for training purposes. Some of the technologies included in the healthcare sector are natural language processing, intelligent agents, computer vision, machine learning, chatbots, voice recognition etc. These technologies can be adopted at varying levels across the healthcare ecosystem. Machine learning can be used to merge an individual’s omic (genomic, proteomic, metabolic) data with other data sources to predict the probability of developing a disease, which can then be addressed through timely intercessions such as preventative therapy.

AI in the healthcare sector in India

AI in the healthcare sector in India is potentially developing. According to a report by the CIS India published earlier this year, AI could help add USD 957 billion to the Indian economy by 2035. Of the USD 5.5 billion that was raised by global digital healthcare companies in July-September 2017 quarter, at least 16 Indian Healthcare IT companies received funding, the report said. State governments are also providing support to AI start-ups.

AI is capable of solving various healthcare challenges in India. The technological innovation is proving to be beneficial in diagnosis procedure, monitoring of chronic conditions, assisting in robotic surgery, drug discovery etc. Among several companies that are exploring various uses of AI in the healthcare segment, Microsoft is taking a major initiative along with Apollo and other hospitals to expand its use in several segments like cardiology, eye-care, diseases like Tuberculosis, HIV etc.

Healthcare start-ups are majorly engaging themselves in the use of Artificial Intelligence.

A list of six healthcare start-ups that are using Artificial Intelligence in India:

Niramai, a Bengaluru-based start-up founded in the year 2016, is using AI for pain-free breast cancer screening.
MUrgency, a Mumbai-based healthcare mobile application is helping people connect in need of medical emergency responses with qualified medical, safety, rescue and assistance professionals.
Advancells, a Noida-based start-up provides stem cell therapy, also known as regenerative therapy, has a large potential in the field of organ transplantation.
Portea, a Bengaluru-based start-up offers home visits from doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and technicians for patients. Patients who are unable to visit hospitals can receive assistance from doctors and medical professionals using remote diagnostics and monitoring equipments, point-of-care devices.
AddressHealth, a Bengaluru-based start-up provides primary pediatric healthcare services to school children where they are screened for hearing, vision, dental health, anthropometry, alongside a medical competition.
LiveHealth, a Pune-based start-up works as a management information system (MIS) for healthcare providers. It collects samples, manages patient records, diagnoses them and generates reports.

Artificial Intelligence, the next-gen innovative thing will act as an “invisible hand” in revolutionising the healthcare sector and is expected to grow in India to USD 372 billion by 2022.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/media-india-group-june-27-2018-binita-punwani-rise-of-ai-in-indian-healthcare-industry

The rise and rise of slacktivism

praskrishna — 2015-10-25T14:49:58Z

Can we change the world with the click of a mouse? Or is it just another feel-good phenomenon? The writer explores the growing penchant for online petitions and desktop activism.

The article by Divya Gandhi was published in the Hindu on October 3, 2015. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

“I am a female journalist and Kumudam’s history of objectifying and judging women sickens me,” writes reporter Kavitha Muralidharan in a no-holds-barred petition on change.org. Tamil magazine Kumudam, which last week published pictures of women in leggings describing them as “vulgar”, must apologise, she said. The apology didn’t come, but on last count the letter to Kumudam’s editor had galvanised over 20,000 signatures and, at least in part, the petition’s aim — to flag sexism in the media — had been met.

Online activism forums such as change.org, jhatkaa.org, avaaz.org or bitgiving.com have turned the Net into a vibrant space for debate, influencing public opinion and, to varying degrees, catalysing change.

Slacktivism — if we must call it that — has existed a while and cannot be dismissed, says Policy Director at the Centre for Internet and Society, Pranesh Prakash. “We can’t underestimate the power of the collective, the power of the word in influencing public opinion and policy.”

Take, for instance, the three-minute ‘Kodaikanal Won’t’ video promoted by Jhatkaa where artist Sofia Ashraf raps about Unilever’s flouting of environmental and safety norms at its thermometer unit in Kodaikanal. The video was watched over 3,00,000 times in its first 48 hours, and a parallel online petition, which asks the company to clean up its “toxic mess” got 91,054 signatures.

No, Unilever has not formally committed to ‘clean up its mess’ yet but what the campaign did was to create public pressure on the company to engage with the mainstream media, says Nityanand Jayaram, an environmental activist who has worked on the Kodaikanal case since 2001. “We had 14 years of invisible hard work behind us. That shroud of invisibility was removed with one social media campaign.”

“Most petitions I can think of have been accompanied by actions on the ground as well,” says Kavita Krishnan, Secretary, All India Progressive Women’s Association. “For instance, if an online petition that says arrest those threatening John Dayal gets 6,000 signatures in 48 hours, these are 6,000 people across the country. I cannot collect them on a Delhi street within 48 hours. It is not that these people would not join a demonstration if they could, but there is no real difference between their having attended a demonstration and their having signed that petition. There are other issues for which you need sustained action or quiet, behind-the-scenes work, but in terms of protests, I think online petitions are very effective.”

How do the views and shares and signatures turn into yardsticks to measure the success of a campaign? In the case of BitGiving, virality translates into crowdfunding. Among its success stories, it counts a campaign to help send India’s ice hockey team, which got no government support, to the Ice Hockey Championship Cup of Asia this year. The campaign came alive on social media, was highlighted in mainstream media, captured the interest of several high-profile funders, and managed to raise more money than the team needed for training, accommodation, airfare and equipment. Jhatkaa measures its campaigns by various criteria, says Deepa Gupta, Executive Director. “We track outcome, the number of people impacted… and we track media coverage.”

A quick scroll down some of these sites reflects the staggering range of subjects that has captured the urban imagination — from OROP to hyper-local issues (garbage in Bengaluru) or animal rights (the culling of stray dogs in Kerala). Just this past week on change.org, “#Khans4Kisaans” shouted out to Shah Rukh, Salman and Aamir to “help the farmers dying in Bollywood’s backyard”; another called for the declassification of Netaji-related files; and a third protested the ban on beef.

So are these forums then turning the apathetic urbanite into a political animal, someone who takes a stance? “Yes and no,” says Prakash. “It really is about how much people get involved in the issue. Often we have citizen groups that form around issues offline, and we have seen very real action on the ground, say, cleaning a lake or even getting a road repaired.”

Gupta says that Jhatkaa’s baseline assumption is not that Indians are apolitical, but that there aren’t enough meaningful ways for them to participate in our democracy outside of elections. “As individuals who aren’t issue experts, many citizens feel powerless when it comes to affecting change on the issues that they care most about.”

She was perplexed, she says, at how difficult it can be for citizens to meaningfully engage with government institutions or corporations in a way that they are heard. “I knew the only way to build a nation-wide constituency of citizens who could take collective action would be if we mobilised people with the help of modern communications and social media.”

Ghousiya Sultana, a PhD student, agrees. She has signed several online petitions and believes that she is, in some small way, making a difference. “I want to feel like I fought a good fight.” On the other hand, corporate executive Anant Kumar says he doesn’t believe in this trend. He is concerned about transparency, how his donation might be used or misused, and he does not see how a letter with a few thousand signatures can have much of a bearing on issues.

But, as Krishnan says, “An online petition doesn’t work like an on-off switch that resolves an issue immediately. It is about whether you successfully shamed them in public. It is about sparking a dialogue.”

With inputs from Zara Khan

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindu-october-3-2015-divya-gandhi-the-rise-and-rise-of-slacktivism

The real Sibal’s law: Resisting Section 66A is futile

praskrishna — 2012-12-03T05:16:11Z

The Information Technology Act is “substantially the same” as laws instituted in other democracies like UK and the United States. What’s more, the language that is employed in various sections is exactly the same. Thus was the thrust of Kapil Sibal’s defense of Section 66A on NDTV last night.

The article by Lakshmi Chaudhry was published in FirstPost on November 30. Pranesh Prakash's blog post on section 66A which was also carried in Outlook is quoted.

The problem therefore lies not in the law but in its interpretation: “It’s very difficult to interpret the act on the ground. If you give this power to a sub-inspector of police, it is more than likely to be misused.” Sibal is hence “open” to putting in place guidelines that may prevent such abuse, whether it involves requiring a senior police officer to make the call or specifying the “circumstances” in which the law is applicable.

Now, there are many ways to tear apart Sibal’s logic. In Outlook, for example, Centre for Internet and Society’s Pranesh Prakash offers a detailed comparison with the UK law to show that: one, the UK courts have “read down” the “broad wording” of the law; two, they remain subject to EU human rights provisions; and three, UK law may well be unconstitutional under the Indian Constitution which offers stronger free speech protection.

Prakash’s legal arguments are worthy, meticulously argued and — in my view — somewhat moot.

Here’s why. Would discarding or amending Section 66A prevent the MNS goons from hauling Sunil Vishwakarma to the police station for a Facebook update? Would it prevent the Palghar policemen from filing a case against Shaheen and Rinu under pressure from the local Sainiks? Would that Jadhavpur professor then be immune from Trinamool harrassment for offending Mamata?

The answer is a big fat N-O.

Sibal is right. In India, the actual law is often irrelevant. Interpretation is all. And that interpretation in the real world of the police thana is determined not by legal standards but according to political power. So we have wonderfully progressive statutes on the book — as we do in the matter of women’s rights — that exist only in theory. More effective and employed are the draconian, colonial-era laws that are routinely used to punish the innocent. The IT act is just one of them.

In India, law is a weapon, a brahmastra of the powerful. The Sainiks were looking to make an example of someone, to exercise their political brawn. Shaheen and Rinu were convenient targets, and once selected, no law could have saved them from Shiv Sena wrath. The legal threshold for “offensive” content is irrelevant to NCP Kiran Pawaskar who put pressure on the police to arrest two Air India employees because they “shared lewd jokes about politicians, made derogatory comments against the Prime Minister and insulted the national flag in their posts.”

The goonda raj of politicians on the Internet merely reflects the reality offline. All that our online activity does is make the aam aadmi more visible, and therefore easier to target and victimise. They can’t put in spy cameras in every living room, but now they can monitor our conversations on Facebook and Twitter instead. In a sense, the Internet has allowed Big Brother into our homes

This is why comparisons to UK or US — which enjoy the rule of law — are irrelevant. And why upgrading the rank of the policeman — DCP or Inspector-general — making the call will not change the outcome in most cases. The political pressures on a DCP or IG are not different than on a lowly sub-inspector who takes action not because he doesn’t understand the law, but because he understands all too well the costs of non-compliance. As for putting a magistrate in charge, well, it was a magistrate who authorised the arrests of Shaheen and Rinu.

The only reason the policemen who arrested the girls may be punished is that the Congress party is in power in Maharashtra, as in not the Shiv Sena or the BJP. In Kolkata, for example, Mamata-di has no intention of taking action against those who arrested Ambikesh Mahapatra. ‘Raja chale bazaar to kutta bhonke hazaar‘ (the king walks to market, though a thousand dogs bark),” declared Didi when pressed on Justice Katju’s criticism of her anti-free speech stance.

It succinctly embodies the attitude of our leaders. Sibal may be saddened by the Palghar case but he was every bit as unruffled as Mamata when Ravi Srinivasan was arrested for an innocuous tweet accusing Karti Chidambaram of corruption. There are naturally no plans to drop the case against him. So it matters little if the IT act is amended or who is tasked with interpreting Section 66A. Who is punished, who receives justice, however delayed, is determined by politics not law.

In his NDTV interview, Sibal chided Barkha for bringing up “5-10 instances” of unlawful arrests when “there must be millions of [abusive] comments that have been put on the internet.” It’s a familiar Sibal strategy that he has employed in the past. Pressed on Ravi Srinivasan’s arrest, he told reporters, “There are 500 things by the name of Kapil Sibal and there are some things which I really don’t like. But I have not taken action.”

What he’s really saying is that each time we update, tweet or comment, we enter an online version of russian roulette, the kind you play with a gun. You never know which chamber is loaded, or when a politician is likely to pull the trigger. We survive not by the mercy of the law but at the whim of the powerful. In India, law isn’t an ass; it’s our dear netaji’s chaprasi.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/first-post-politics-lakshmi-chaudhry-november-30-2012-the-real-sibals-law-resisting-section-66a-is-futile

The Quixotic Fight to Clean up the Web

sunil — 2012-01-26T20:53:02Z

The ongoing attempt to pre-screen online content won’t change anything. It will only drive netizens into the arms of criminals, writes Sunil Abraham in this article published in Tehelka Magazine, Vol 9, Issue 04, Dated 28 Jan 2012.

GOOGLE AND Facebook’s ongoing case in the Delhi High Court over offensive online content is curious in three ways. First, the complaint does not mention the IT Act, 2000. Prior to the 2008 amendment, intermediaries (in this case, Google, Facebook, etc) had no immunity. But after the amendment, intermediaries have significant immunity and are not considered liable unless takedown notices are ignored.

Second, it is curious that the complaint does not mention specific individuals or groups directly responsible for authoring the allegedly offensive material. Only intermediaries have been explicitly named. If specific content items have been submitted in court then it is curious that specific accounts and users have not been charged with the same offences.

Three, Delhi-based journalist Vinay Rai claims that takedown notices and requests for user information were ignored by the intermediaries. As yet, unpublished research at the Centre for Internet and Society has reached the exact opposite conclusion. We sent fraudulent takedown notices to seven of the largest intermediaries in India as part of a policy sting operation. Six of them over-complied and demonstrated no interest in protecting freedom of expression. Our takedown notices were complied with even though they were largely nonsensical. It is therefore curious that Rai’s takedown notices were ignored.

Under Section 79 of the IT Act, the intermediary must not “initiate the transmission”, “select the receiver of the transmission” and “select or modify the information contained in the transmission”. In other words, they must not possess “actual knowledge” of the content. This would be absolutely true if intermediaries acted as “dumb pipes” or “mere conduits”. But today, they have reactive “human filters” ensuring conformance to community guidelines that often go beyond constitutional limits on freedom of expression.

For example, Facebook deletes breastfeeding photographs if a certain proportion of the breast is visible, despite numerous protests. Intermediaries also use proactive “machine filters” to purge their networks of pornography and copyright infringing content. In order to retain immunity under the IT Act, intermediaries would have to demonstrate that they have no “actual knowledge”. This would also imply that they cannot proactively filter or pre-screen content without becoming liable for illegal content.

More sophisticated “machine filters” will continue to be built for social media platforms as computing speeds increase and costs decrease dramatically. But there will be significant collateral damage — the vibrancy of online Indian communities will be diminished as legitimate content will be removed and this in turn will retard Internet adoption rates. Free media, democratic governance, research and development, culture and the arts will all be fundamentally undermined. So whether pre-censorship is technically feasible is an irrelevant question. The real question is what limits on freedom of expression are reasonable in the Internet age.

The legal tussle is yet another chance for reflecting on the shortcomings of the IT Act

Censorship is like prohibition, illegal content will persist, the mafia will profit and ordinary citizens will be implicated in criminal networks. Use of anonymising proxies, circumvention tools and encryption technologies will proliferate, frustrating network optimisation efforts and law enforcement activities.

This is yet another opportunity for reflecting on the shortcomings of the ITAct. A lot of the confusion and anxiety today emerges from vague language, unconstitutional limits on freedom of expression, multi-tiered blanket surveillance provisions, blunt security policy measures contained in the statute and its associated rules. The next Parliament session is the last opportunity for MPs to ask for the rules for intermediaries, cyber cafes and reasonable security practices to be revisited. The MP who musters the courage to speak will be dubbed a superhero.

As told to Shonali Ghosal. Sunil Abraham is Executive director, centre for internet and society and can be contacted at sunil@cis-india.org. The original article was published in Tehelka.

Illustration by Sudeep Chaudhuri

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/quixotic-fight-to-clean-the-web

The quest for genuine clout on the internet

praskrishna — 2013-10-29T07:08:40Z

There is a lot of interest and speculation on the impact of social media on politics because of its amplification effects.

The article by Karthik Subramanian was published in the Hindu on October 13, 2013. T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.

There is no denying that it has overtaken the traditional media in certain facets of news - most notably when it comes to breaking news and that it provides grounds for expressing one's ideas unbounded.

But the marketing and the advertising world are only just coming to grips with the medium. (Twitter is set to launch its IPO soon and Facebook is going to increasingly face the need to monetize its services. The Web has a history of complaints where users have found it tough to different between user-generated content and 'promoted' content.)

In effect, the question of the “influence” that social media and its star patrons wield is still being assessed, especially in the loaded context of whether its proactive use would translate to votes in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Not only are the number of active social media users negligible in the Indian context, there are doubts on whether a 'cause and effect' scenario is possible.

There are two predominant points of view, while talking about the influence of social media campaigns on politics: One that closely reads the Facebook ‘likes’ and Twitter trends as an important measure of public pulse; and the other which dismisses any sort of influence that social media has on real and grass root level politics.

T. Vishnu Vardhan, a researcher at Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, prefers the middle ground. “It is important to not ignore the growing popularity of social media in India with [telecom] service providers providing Facebook access at Rs. 1 for an entire day. However, I would refrain from seeing a direct correlation between a person's participation on social media to real-time events in society including politics.”

Propaganda fallacy

“In India and especially in Tamil Nadu it has been proved that the Propaganda Model is a fallacy. There is no simple formula, whether it be cinema of 1970s or the Social Media of the 2010s. There are too many factors and layers that influence real-time events.”

Companies around the world are trying to make sense of this 'Big Data' that people's digital lives are generating. And whilst individuals and even some clever campaigns make snap pronouncements based on superficial data and analysis, there are a few companies that are looking at it through the prism of complex algorithms and technology-enabled web crawling.

One such company Kochi-based startup Riafy Technologies is attempting to make sense of the digital noise in a broad sweeping sense looking at three domains: relational intelligence, predictive analysis and big data.

One of the their applications 'Movie Tarot' predicts the outcome of Friday releases at the movie box office, based on the digital traffic on the days preceding the release. Not every instance of praise or every denouncement is treated equally. Instead, they have an intelligent algorithm that they apply to predict the box office collections and the ultimate verdict. (They claim to have a fairly accurate track record thus far.)

The company's CEO John Mathew says there is a correlation between a person's online presence and behaviour in the real world. “This influence is significant in age groups of 18-34,” he says. “As for Lok Sabha elections, the 'social media influenced' voter turnout would be marginal when we look at the country as a whole, but this number would be substantial in the 'swing constituencies'.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-october-13-2013-karthik-subramanian-the-quest-for-genuine-clout-on-the-internet

The Public Voice: Privacy Rights are a Global Challenge

praskrishna — 2012-10-22T14:28:09Z

October 21, 2012 is an important day for global civil society defending privacy and free speech. The Public Voice coalition will be hosting a global conference in Punta del Este, Uruguay, and you are invited to take part in the conversation and interact with the panelists. Malavika Jayaram is speaking at this event.

You can follow the live conversation here, and join the conversation by using #thepublicvoice hashtag, ask questions, participate in polls and interact with those covering the event in several languages. The conference aims to assess cultures and privacy perspectives from around the World, and members of civil society wil discuss the spread of Surveillance Technologies and its implications in societies, experts will explore Latin American policy, law, and technology perspectives on privacy governance and suggest to governments and private sector to safeguard citizens privacy.

You can read the program and follow the live Webcast in English and Spanish.

During the day the panelists will assess cultures and privacy perspectives from around the world. They will raise public awareness of surveillance technology and its consequences to consumers, for freedom of expression and human rights, and they will explore Latin American policy, law, and technology perspectives. It is the small window civil society has before the 34th International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners comprising all the governmental agencies all over the World, webcast available here. It certainly can bring the relevant topics for citizens to the discussion table. I hope you join us.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/privacy-rights-are-a-global-challenge

The Privatisation of Censorship: The Online Responsibility to Protect Free Expression

praskrishna — 2012-12-09T01:48:13Z

Pranesh Prakash was a panelist at this workshop organised on November 5, 2012. It was organized by Index on Censorship.

Much is known about state censorship, but increasingly private corporations are implementing censorship either at the behest of governments, or as part of a ‘walled garden’ approach. This censorship takes many guises: whether the proactive take-down of entirely legal material, the blocking of websites by overly zealous ISPs, mobile filters that cut access to websites such as Index on Censorship and the use of surveillance technology on behalf of autocratic states. The combination of state-led censorship with the privatisation of censorship requires a debate on the responsibilities of corporations and the framework needed to protect free expression online.

This side session will focus on two key areas:
1. Take-down, blocking and filtering of content
2. The export of surveillance technology, privacy

The panel will explore the ways in which the above can affect free expression online, and how civil society, governments and corporations can and should approach these issues, addressing the following questions:

1. Whether, why and in what ways censorship and surveillance is either as or more pervasive, intrusive and chilling than offline, and the impact on free speech and press freedom?
2. The inappropriate, intrusive or excessive use of filters and firewalls including how these impact directly and indirectly on access to media and the nature of news provision
3. Criminalisation of free speech and free expression – chilling use of takedown requests (impacting on public online debates, on media freedom including investigative journalism), and constraints on comment and debate (twitter, trolls, comment threads etc);
4. Excessive and blanket surveillance and data-gathering
5. Regulations and laws including intermediary responsibility that curtail digital free speech

Chair:
Michael Harris, Head of Advocacy, Index on Censorship

Panelists:

Dr Hosein Badran, Regional Chief Technology Officer, Cisco Systems International, covering MENA
Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director at the Centre for Internet and Society
Abhilash Nair, Northumbria University, UK
Camino Manjon Sierra, International Relations Policy Officer, Directorate General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, European Commission
Andrew Puddephatt, Global Partners and Associates

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/privatisation-of-censorship

The Private Eye

nishant — 2012-05-24T06:25:48Z

The world’s largest digital social networking system, oh ok, Facebook, to just name names, was recently in a lot of buzz.

Nishant Shah's article was published in the Indian Express on May 14, 2012

The world’s largest digital social networking system, oh ok, Facebook, to just name names, was recently in a lot of buzz. For once, it was not about the laments of how we are downgrading the meaning of friendship, eroding social relationships, and visions of an apocalyptic future where people will lose the knack of face-time to interface intimacies. Instead, the buzz was about Facebook’s collaboration with the American non-profit coalition Donate Life America to encourage more people to sign themselves up as organ donors. The feature that allows the American users to sign up as organ donors, promising their organs, in the event of their death, to others who might live through them, has been an instant hit. More than a lakh people have updated their status to reflect their volunteering as organ donors, and thousands others have signed up for the noteworthy initiative.

There is no doubt that harnessing the powers of social networks for such causes is laudable, and indeed, follows the trends that we have been witnessing the last few years, where people have mobilised their networks for a range of things — from overthrowing governments to dancing in flash mobs. It is interesting that initiatives which were already working with large-scale networks are now collaborating within the social media space to tap into the immense potential of social networking. It is also noteworthy that Facebook Connect, which is a slowly growing system by which users authenticate themselves to different portals and can use their Facebook credentials instead of creating new profiles with more passwords to remember, was used effectively to facilitate registering for a new system. It is a testimony to Facebook’s growing omnipresence, that initiatives like these can use those credentials in their systems.

There is a wide range of interests that punctuate this phenomenon and there is a rich discourse that reports, analyses and maps it. However, I want to take this opportunity to make a distinction between data types that is often lost in the presumption that all information on a social network is the same kind of information. With the enabling of this feature, Facebook has started mining a new set of personal data that is at once fiercely private and vulnerable. Till now, Facebook and other such social networking systems were already harvesting a wide range of data — personal data such as name, gender, birth-date, pictures, etc.; social data such as relationships, interactions, communities, groups, likes, etc.; usage data like preferences, navigation, search, frequency of interaction et al. While all this data has been about the personal, it is also data that we share and display in our everyday life. Who we are, what we look like, the politics that we subscribe to, the communities we are a part of, languages we speak, products we consume and people we hang out with is physical data that is available to anybody who cares to watch us.

While there are serious repercussions on what happens when such data falls into malicious hands, there is still objectivity to this data. This is data which we can understand as personal — as referring to the person, but not necessarily private. Private data is actually the information that we have singular access to. And this distinction between the personal and the private is good to understand, because with the Organ Donor badge, Facebook has entered a new realm of data mining, which is truly private. Till now, privacy arguments around Facebook have not been as fuelled as they might otherwise be, because there is an innate understanding that there is a certain performative aspect to our personal data, because it facilitates different kinds of negotiations, transactions and engagements. However, with private data — health and medical history, gender and sexual orientations, desires and fantasies, moral and ethical choices — we are entering murky waters. This happens because while violation of personal data can be easily rectified by resorting to the law, the private is more in the grey zone, subject to interpretations and often unquantifiable in its intensity.

The concerns that will emerge are the same kinds that we have seen in other large projects that deal with private data like the Aadhar project that uses biometric identification data to identify citizens in India. While Facebook might not be collecting biometric data, it is important to recognise that this new kind of data disclosure, which puts our private information in the public domain, only mandates better security and privacy control within these social networks. As we move towards a data-driven future, we need to be more aware of the different kinds of data sets that we are making public and educate ourselves about the risks of this disclosure, without being carried away by the sway of meme-like behaviour and viral trends online. The next time you decide to reveal some new kinds of data about yourself, pause for a moment and reflect on whether it is personal or private, and whether it is absolutely necessary to facilitate your interaction within that information system and the rewards and dangers it comes with.

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

The Privacy Rights of Whistleblowers

elonnai — 2012-03-22T05:47:16Z

The recent disclosures from Wikileaks have shown that the right to information, whistle-blowing, and privacy are interconnected. This note looks at the different ways in which the three are related, as well as looking at the benefits and drawbacks to Wikileaks in terms of privacy.

Introduction

In a recent interview, the Canadian Privacy Commissioner was quoted as saying “Information and the manipulation of information is the key to power. Those who can control the information can influence society enormously.” History and present-day society have both proven the truth in this statement. It is one among many reasons that the right to information is important to uphold. In India, and in other countries, there are statutes – in India, the Right To Information Act – that entitles the public to request and receive information that pertains to public bodies and their conduct, information that is publicly available because it is intrinsically related to the public interest. An entirely separate but equally critical way in which the public is kept informed is through whistle-blowing. Traditionally, whistle-blowing is any disclosure made in the name of public interest. Recent events such as the Ratan Tata case and the leaks of US diplomatic cables have brought to light the relationship between the public’s right to information, the rights of whistleblowers, and the rights of individuals to privacy. These recent cases have shown that the right to information, whistle-blowing, and the right to privacy are interconnected, because privacy can provide individuals with the means to sustain autonomy against potentially overwhelming forces of government and persons who might have mixed motivations. The right to information and whistle-blowing are means by which the government is held accountable to the public if they violate the law or the public trust. The Wikileaks case and the Ratan Tata case raise important questions about when those two interests need to give way to private interests. One of the key questions that Wikileaks raises is: if whistleblowing is supposed to be disclosure in the public interest -- i.e., to protect the public – should disclosure of personal information be permissible only if a person can demonstrate that he/she is trying to remedy or avoid actual wrongdoing rather than simply publishing information that is "interesting to the public?"

What is a Whistleblower and how does a Whistleblower Benefit from Wikileaks?

Whistleblowing is the modern counterpart to “informers” – people who reveal others’ wrongdoing. Much whistleblowing occurs by going "up the chain" in a person's own department or agency or company. If the person is reporting wrongdoing and the person ultimately goes to the authorities about illegal activity, the individual reporting the leak can sometimes get immunity for his or her own actions, can sometimes collect part of the penalties, and can under certain statutes in some countries even bring suit if the company retaliates against him -- for example, by firing him. In this way traditional whistleblowing places the responsibility for legal and ethical conduct on employees who are better situated to see wrongdoing than outsiders would be. In many countries, a person may present information of a whistleblowing nature to a judicial body. The judicial body then determines the validity of the information, the degree of public interest involved, and the proper form of redress to be taken. The judicial body offers legal protection to the whistleblower. Another method of whistleblowing is to leak information to the press. Once information is in the public domain – at least if there is freedom of press -- the information can no longer be covered up. Neither the right to free press, nor the right to protection as a whistleblower is universal. The current critique of the Indian Whistle Blowing Bill is that the right to protection will not be ensured. A Times of India article issued in September 2010 pointed out that the Whistle Blowing Act’s biggest weakness is that the Bill’s Central Vigilance Commission is designated to play both the role as competent authority to deal with complaints file by whistleblowers and as the tribunal to protect whistleblowers. Structuring the power to allow one body to fulfil both functions runs the risk of bias and could breed distrust that would cause people to avoid the system altogether. The article complained that the Bill has no teeth, and that even if the Commission believes that the whistleblowing is valid, it is able only to give advice rather than actually to prosecute individuals. The article recites extreme instances in which individuals have blown the whistle and paid for it with their lives. For example: in 2005 a manager of the Indian Oil Corporation was killed after exposing a scheme in adulterated petrol, and in 2010 an RTI activist was killed after exposing land scams in Mahrashtra. In these situations, Wikileaks is an interesting and powerful tool for individuals who either do not want to leak their information to a judicial body or are not protected if they do so in their own country. Leaking information to Wikileaks is in one sense analogous to leaking information to the press, but it is not precisely the same because it is not a news media outlet, but instead is a way for a person to post information on a mass media outlet. It should be noted, however, that informants who leak to Wikileaks are not afforded the same immunity that individuals who leak to authorities are granted. When an individual shares documents or information with Wikileaks, the site in turn acts as a platform to publish the information on the web and with the press. Being an independent entity that is neither tied down to a certain territory, government, or entity – Wikileaks has the pull of non-bias. But the strength of Wikileaks is also its weakness. When 250,000 diplomatic cables were posted, there was no one who understood the context of the content to monitor to ensure that everything was appropriate to post. As a result, the information was transmitted to an audience who normally would not be entitled to it. By doing so, the leaked information placed individual diplomats in precarious positions that could potentially put them in harm’s way and unnecessarily damage their reputations, as well as putting the reputation of the United States on the line.

Privacy and Whistleblowing

As a result the United States is looking to press charges against Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, for espionage. The way in which Wikileaks leaked information and the nature of the leak has brought privacy into the picture. When looking at the act of whistleblowing through the lens of privacy, there are obvious privacy concerns for the whistleblower, for the person or entity whose information has been leaked, and for possible third parties involved. Paul Chadwick, the Victorian Privacy Commissioner, pointed out that for the whistleblower the main privacy concerns include the individual’s identity, safety, and reputation. For the alleged wrongdoer the privacy concerns include: identity, safety, employment, and liberty (where sanctions may include imprisonment). For third parties, reputation and safety can both be jeopardized by disclosures by whistleblowers. The Wikileaks leaks squarely present the question whether intent should be brought into the analysis of privacy and whistleblowers. If a whistleblower is disclosing with the intent protect the public, the protections afforded to this person should weigh differently against the privacy interests of alleged wrongdoers and third parties than for someone who is simply defining the public interest as “interesting to the public,” or, worse, as seen in the false leak by Pakistan against India, is looking to leak information to disrupt public interest. Even though Wikileaks works to protect the anonymity of individuals who leak information, it is not bound by any law to protect the privacy of individuals involved in the leak. The concept behind Wikileaks is important. By interacting with government information, it has the ability to bring accountability and transparency to governments, but the only regulation over Wikileaks is internal (and thus inherently subjective). Wikileaks needs to change its structure to take into account leaks shared without the intent of protecting the public interest and even then needs to monitor to prevent leaks that could place individuals in precarious situations or damage reputations with no validating information.

Sources:

http://www.ctv.ca/generic/generated/static/business/article1833688.html

Chadwick, Paul. Whistleblowing, Transparency, and Privacy: Aspects of the relationship between Victoria’s Whistleblowers Protection Act and the Information Privacy Act.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy/privacy-wikilileaks-whistleblowers