We are anonymous, we are legion

Workshop on Center for IT and Society

praskrishna — 2016-12-23T14:05:00Z

This workshop was held at IIT, Delhi on December 20, 2016. Amber Sinha attended the workshop. The meeting focused on the curriculum and the way forward, especially with respect to the industry requirements.

Session 1 (11:00 - 13:00*): Quick recap of the earlier workshop. Description and focus area of the center. Feedback about the interdisciplinary program in IT and Social Sciences.
Session 2 (14:00 - 16:00)*: Discussion on industry requirement and absorption criterion.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/workshop-on-center-for-it-and-society

Workshop on Big Data in India: Benefits, Harms, and Human Rights (Delhi, October 01)

vanya — 2016-09-28T05:53:55Z

CIS welcomes you to participate in the workshop we are organising on Saturday, October 01 at India Habitat Centre, Delhi, to discuss benefits, harms, and human rights implications of big data technologies, and explore potential research questions. A quick RSVP will be much appreciated.

Workshop invitation: Download (PDF)

Workshop agenda: Download (PDF)

In the last few years, there has been an emergence of the discourse of big data viewing it as an instrument not just for ensuring efficient, targeted and personalised services in the private sector, but also for development, social and policy research, and formalising and monetising various sections of the economy. This possibility is premised upon the idea that there is great knowledge that resides in both traditional and new forms of data made possible by our digital selves, and that we may now have the capability to tap into that knowledge for insights across diverse sectors like healthcare, finance, e-governance, education, law enforcement and disaster management, to name but a few. Alongside, various commentators have also pointed to the new problems and risks that big data could create for privacy of individuals through greater profiling, for free speech and economic choice by strengthening monopolistic tendencies, and for socio-economic inequalities by making existing disparities more acute and facilitating algorithmic bias and exclusion.

From a regulatory perspective, big data technologies pose fundamental challenges to the national data regulatory frameworks that have existed since many years. The nature of collection and utilisation of big data, which is often not driven by immediate purpose of the collected data, conflict with the principles of data minimisation and collection limitation that have been integral to data protection laws globally. This compels us to revisit existing theories of data governance. Additionally, use of big data in public decision-making highlights the question of how algorithmic control and governance must be regulated. This raises concerns around taking determining a balanced position that recognises the importance of big data, including for development actions, and ensures unhindered innovation with simultaneous focus on greater transparency and anonymisation to protect individual privacy, and various big data risks faced by population groups. In order to answer these questions, we need to begin with identifying the different harms and benefits of big data that could arise through its use across sectors and disciplines, especially in the context of human rights.

This workshop is designed around an extensive study of current and potential future uses of big data for governance in India that CIS has undertaken over the last year. The study focused on key central government projects and initiatives like the UID project, the Digital India programme, the Smart Cities Challenge, etc.

We will initiate the workshop with a detailed presentation of our findings and key concerns, which will then shape the discussion agenda of the workshop. We look forward to discuss aspects of big data technologies through the entry points of harms, opportunities, and human rights.

The final session of the workshop will focus on identifying key research questions on the topic, and exploring potential alliances of scholars and organisations that can drive such research activities.

We look forward to making this a forum for knowledge exchange for our friends and colleagues attending the discussion and discuss the opportunity to for potential collaboration.

RSVP: Please send an email to Ajoy Kumar at <ajoy@cis-india.org>.

Organisers: Amber Sinha <amber@cis-india.org> and Sumandro Chattapadhyay <sumandro@cis-india.org>.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/big-data-in-india-benefits-harms-and-human-rights-oct-01-2016

Workshop on 'Urban Data, Inequality and Justice in the Global South'

Admin — 2019-07-06T01:30:16Z

Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon presented our research on video-based surveillance in New Delhi at a workshop on urban data, inequality, and justice in the global South at the University of Manchester on 14 June 2019.

The agenda for the workshop and the presentations made by CIS can be accessed here. The research was conducted as part of a grant from the University, as part of a project on justice in data systems within cities. It will bepublished as a working paper by the university in July-August.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/workshop-on-urban-data-inequality-and-justice-in-the-global-south

Workshop on 'Privacy after Big Data' (Delhi, November 12)

sumandro — 2016-11-12T10:14:52Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and the Sarai programme, CSDS, invite you to a workshop on 'Privacy after Big Data: What Changes? What should Change?' on Saturday, November 12. This workshop aims to build a dialogue around some of the key government-led big data initiatives in India and elsewhere that are contributing significant new challenges and concerns to the ongoing debates on the right to privacy. It is an open event. Please register to participate.

Invitation note and agenda: Download (PDF)

Venue and RSVP

Venue: Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29, Rajpur Road, Civil Lines, Delhi 110054.

Location on Google Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/place/CSDS/@28.677775,77.2162523,17z/.

Registration: Complete this form.

Concept Note

In this age of big data, discussions about privacy are intertwined with the use of technology and the data deluge. Though big data possesses enormous value for driving innovation and contributing to productivity and efficiency, privacy concerns have gained significance in the dialogue around regulated use of data and the means by which individual privacy might be compromised through means such as surveillance, or protected. The tremendous opportunities big data creates in varied sectors ranges from financial technology, governance, education, health, welfare schemes, smart cities to name a few.

With the UID (“Aadhaar”) project re-animating the Right to Privacy debate in India, and the financial technology ecosystem growing rapidly, striking a balance between benefits of big data and privacy concerns is a critical policy question that demands public dialogue and research to inform an evidence based decision.

Also, with the advent of potential big data initiatives like the ambitious Smart Cities Mission under the Digital India Scheme, which would rely on harvesting large data sets and the use of analytics in city subsystems to make public utilities and services efficient, the tasks of ensuring data security on one hand and protecting individual privacy on the other become harder.

As key privacy principles are at loggerheads with big data activities, it is important to consider privacy as an embedded component in the processes, systems and projects, rather than being considered as an afterthought. These examples highlight the current state of discourse around data protection and privacy in India and the shapes they are likely to take in near future.

This workshop aims to build a dialogue around some of the key government-led big data initiatives in India and elsewhere that are contributing significant new challenges and concerns to the ongoing debates on the right to privacy.

Agenda

09:00-09:30 Tea and Coffee

09:30-10:00 Introduction

Mr. Amber Sinha and Mr. Sandeep Mertia
This session will introduce the topic of the workshop in the context of the ongoing works at CIS and Sarai.

10:00-11:00 From Privacy Bill(s) to ‘Habeas Data’

Dr. Usha Ramanathan and Mr. Vipul Kharbanda
This session will present a brief history of the privacy bill(s) in India and end with reflections on ‘habeas data’ as a lens for thinking and actualising privacy after big data.

11:00-11:30 Tea and Coffee

11:30-12:30 Digital ID, Data Protection, and Exclusion

Ms. Amelia Andersdotter and Mr. Srikanth Lakshmanan
This session will discuss national centralised digital ID systems, often operating at a cross-functional scale, and highlight its implications for discussions on data protection, welfare governance, and exclusion from public and private services.

12:30-13:30 Digital Money and Financial Inclusion

Dr. Anupam Saraph and Ms. Astha Kapoor
This session will focus on the rise of digital banking and online payments as core instruments of financial inclusion in India, especially in the context of the Jan Dhan Yojana and UPI, and reflect on the concerns around privacy and financial data.

13:30-14:30 Lunch

14:30-15:30 Big Data and Mass Surveillance

Dr. Anja Kovacs and Mr. Matthew Rice
This session will reflect on the rise of mass communication surveillance across the world, and the evolving challenges of regulating il/legal surveillance by government agencies.

15:30-16:15 Privacy is (a) Right

Mr. Apar Gupta and Ms. Kritika Bhardwaj
This brief session is to share initial ideas and strategies for articulating and actualising a constitutional right to privacy in India.

16:15-16:30 Tea and Coffee

16:30-17:30 Round Table

An open discussion session to conclude the workshop.

Speakers

Mr. Amber Sinha

Amber works on issues surrounding privacy, big data, and cyber security. He is interested in the impact of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and learning algorithms on existing legal frameworks, and how they need to evolve in response. Amber studied humanities and law at National Law School of India University, Bangalore.

E-mail: amber at cis-india dot org.

Twitter: @ambersinha07.

Ms. Amelia Andersdotter

Amelia Andersdotter has been a Member of the European Parliament. She works on practical implications of data protection laws and consumer information security in Sweden, and digital rights in the Europe in general. Presently she is residing in Bangalore, where she is a visiting scholar with Centre for Internet and Society. She holds a BSc in Mathematics.

URL: https://dataskydd.net.

Twitter: @teirdes.

Dr. Anja Kovacs

Dr. Anja Kovacs directs the Internet Democracy Project in Delhi, India, which works for an Internet that supports free speech, democracy and social justice in India and beyond. Anja’s research and advocacy focuses especially on questions regarding freedom of expression, cybersecurity and the architecture of Internet governance. She has been a member of the of the Investment Committee of the Digital Defenders Partnership and of the Steering Committee of Best Bits, a global network of civil society members. She has also worked as an international consultant on Internet issues, including for the Independent Commission on Multilateralism, the United Nations Development Programme Asia Pacific and the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Mr. Frank La Rue, as well as having been a Fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India.

Internet Democracy Project: https://internetdemocracy.in.

Twitter: @anjakovacs.

Dr. Anupam Saraph

Anupam Saraph has extensively researched India's UID number that has been widely regarded as the game changer in development programs. It has come to be linked with both public and private databases and become the requirement for access to entitlements, benefits, services and rights. Dr. Saraph, who has the design of at least two identification programs to his credit has researched the UID’s functional creep since its inception.

He has been dissecting the myths of what the UID is or is not. He has also tracked the consequences of its linkages on databases that protect national security, sovereignty, democratic status and the entire banking and money system in India. He has also highlighted the implications of its use for targeted delivery of cash subsidies from the Consolidated Fund of India. He has written and lectured widely about the devastating impact of the UID number on development programs, national security and the governability of India.

As a Professor of Systems, Governance and Decision Sciences, Environmental Systems and Business he mentors students and teaches systems, information systems, environmental systems and sustainable development at universities in Europe, Asia and the Americas. He has worked with the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rijksuniversitiet Groningen, RIVM, University of Edinburgh, Resource Use Institute, Systems Research Institute among others. Dr. Saraph has had the unique distinction of being India’s only person who has held the only office of a City CIO in India, in a PPP arrangement with government, industry and himself. He has also been the first e-governance Advisor to a State government. Dr. Saraph has held CxO and ministerial level positions and serves as an independent director on the boards of Public and Private Sector companies and NGOs. He is also the President of the Nagrik Chetna Manch, an NGO charged with the mission to bring accountability in governance.

Dr. Saraph is also actively engaged in civil society where he participates in several environmental, resource and nature conservation initiatives, has authored draft legislations for river and natural resource conservation, right to good governance and has contributed to governance, election and democratic reforms. Dr. Saraph is a regular columnist in newspapers and writes on issues of governance, future design, technology and education from a systems perspective.

As a future designer and recognized as a global expert on complex systems he helps individuals and organisations understand and design the future of their worlds. Together they address the toughest challenges, accomplish missions and achieve business goals. He also supports building capacity to address the challenges of today as well as to build future designs through teams and effective leadership. Since the eighties Dr. Saraph has modeled complex systems of cities, countries, regions and even the planet. His models have been awarded internationally and even placed in 10-year permanent exhibitions.

Dr Saraph works with business and government executives, civil society leaders, politicians, generals, civil servants, police, trade unionists, community activists, United Nations and ASEAN officials, judges, writers, media, architects, designers, technologists, scientists, entrepreneurs, board members and business leaders of small, mid and large single and trans-national companies, religious leaders and artists across a dozen countries and various industry sectors to help them and their organisations succeed in their missions. He advises the World Economic Forum through its Global Agenda Council for Complex Systems and the Club of Rome, Indian National Association as a founder life member.

Dr Saraph holds a PhD in designing sustainable systems from the faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, the Netherlands.

Website: http://anupam.saraph.in.

Twitter: @anupamsaraph.

Mr. Apar Gupta

Apar Gupta practices law in Delhi. He is also one of the co-founders of the Internet Freedom Foundation. His work and writing on public interest issues can be accessed at his personal website www.apargupta.com.

Twitter: @aparatbar.

Ms. Astha Kapoor

Astha Kapoor is a public policy strategy consultant working on financial inclusion and digital payments. Currently, she is working with MicroSave. Her tasks involve a focus on government to people (G2P) payments - and her work spans strategy, advisory and evaluation with the DBT Mission, Office of the Chief Economic Advisor, NITI Aayog and ministries pertaining to food, fuel and fertilizer. She recently designed a pilot to digitize uptake of fertilizers in Krishna district, and evaluated the newly introduced coupon system in the Public Distribution System in Bengaluru.

Twitter: @kapoorastha.

Ms. Kritika Bhardwaj

Kritika Bhardwaj works as a Programme Officer at the Centre for Communication Governance (CCG), National Law University, Delhi. Her main areas of research are privacy and data protection. At CCG, she has written about the privacy implications of several contemporary issues such as Aadhaar (India's unique identification project), cloud computing and the right to be forgotten. A lawyer by training, Kritika has a keen interest in information law and human rights law.

Centre for Communication Governance, NLU Delhi: http://ccgdelhi.org.

Twitter: @Kritika12.

Mr. Matthew Rice

Matthew Rice is an Advocacy Officer at Privacy International working across the organisation engaging with international partners and strengthening their capacity on communications surveillance issues. He has previously worked at Privacy International as a consultant building the Surveillance Industry Index, the largest publicly available database on the private surveillance sector ever assembled. Matthew graduated from University of Aberdeen with an LLB (Hons.) and also has an MA in Human Rights from University College London.

Privacy International: https://privacyinternational.org.

Twitter: @mattr3.

Mr. Sandeep Mertia

Sandeep Mertia is a Research Associate at The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. He is an ICT engineer by training with research interests in Science & Technology Studies, Software Studies and Anthropology. He is conducting an ethnographic study of emerging modes of data-driven knowledge production in the social sector.

Sarai: http://sarai.net.

Twitter: @SandeepMertia.

Academia: https://daiict.academia.edu/SandeepMertia.

Mr. Srikanth Lakshmanan

Srikanth is a software professional with interests in Internet, follower of Internet policy discussions, volunteers for multiple online campaigns related to Internet. He is also fascinated by FOSS, opendata, localization, Wikipedia, maps, public transit, civic tech and occasionally contributes to them.

Site: http://www.srik.me.

Twitter: @logic.

Mr. Vipul Kharbanda

Vipul Kharbanda is a consultant with the Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore. After finishing his BA.LLB.(Hons.) from National Law School of India University in Bangalore, he worked for India’s largest corporate law firm for two and a half years in their Mumbai office for two years working primarily on the financing of various infrastructure projects such as Power Plants, Roads, Airports, etc. Since quitting his corporate law job, Vipul has been working as the Associate Editor in a legal publishing house which has been publishing legal books and journals for the last 90 years in India. He has also been involved with the Center for Internet and Society as a Consultant working primarily on issues related to privacy and surveillance.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/privacy-after-big-data-delhi-nov-12-2016

Women's Safety? There is an App for That

rohini — 2017-01-10T02:48:34Z

“After locking ourselves in a room for more than 6 days, this is what we came out [sic] with. Join us in helping make WOMEN feel SAFE,” read a gloating press release about a smartphone app for women to notify their near ones that they were in distress. It was one among many such PRs frequently landing in my mailbox after the rape and murder of a young student on board a private bus in Delhi in 2012.

The article by Rohini Lakshané was published in Gender IT.org on May 19, 2016. This was also mirrored by Feminism in India on January 9, 2017.

The incident had spurred protests across the country and made international headlines. Along with all this came a slew of new “women’s safety” apps. Existing ones, many of which had fizzled out, were conveniently relaunched. My own experience of user-testing such apps in India back then was that they were unreliable at best and dangerously counterproductive at worst. Some of them were endorsed by governments and celebrities and ended up being glorified despite their flaws, their technical and systemic handicaps never acknowledged at all.

There are myriad mobile phone apps meant to be deployed for personal safety, but their basic functioning is more or less the same: the user activates the app (by pressing a button, shaking the device or similar cue), which sends a distress message containing the users’ location to pre-defined contacts. Some apps include additional artefacts such as a short audio or video recording of the situation. Some others augment this mechanism by alerting the police and other agencies best placed to respond to the emergency. For example, the Companion app for students living on campus notifies the university along with police. The SOS buttons in taxi-hailing apps such as Uber enable the user’s contacts to follow the cab’s GPS trail and notify them and the cab company’s “incident response team” of emergencies. Apps such as Kitestring would treat the lack of the user’s response within a time-window as the trigger for a distress message. All their technical wizardry perhaps makes it easy to lose sight of the fact that technology is not a saviour but a tool or an enabler, that technology alone cannot be the panacea of a problem that is deeply complex and, in reality, rooted in society and governance.

The Indian government announced last month that every phone sold in the country from January 2017 should be equipped with a panic button that sends distress flares to the police and a trusted set of contacts. Nearly half the phones sold in India cost USD 100 or less. Prices are kept so low by sacrificing features and the quality of the hardware; there are a lot of phones with substandard GPS modules, poor touchscreens, slow processors, bad cameras, tiny memory, and dismal battery life. They run on different versions of different operating systems, some of them outdated. All of these factors would determine if someone is able to use the app at all and how quickly they and their phone would be able to respond to an emergency. Additionally, mobile phone signals become thin or shaky in areas with a high number of users and buildings located cheek-by-jowl. Even when the mobile hardware is good and the mobile signal usable, GPS accuracy can be spotty and constant location tracking would hog battery. These issues would affect the efficacy of any app. Besides, there is too much uncertainty for an app developer to factor in. (Two years ago, I learnt about an app called Pukar, then operational in collaboration with police departments in four cities in India. Pukar solved the problem of potential inaccuracy of the GPS location by getting the user’s contacts to tell the police where the person in distress might be.) Designing a one-size-fits-all safety app is almost impossible. The app that rings a loud alarm when triggered may save someone’s life or spoil the chances of someone who is trying to get help while hiding. Different people may be vulnerable to different kinds of distress situations and an app can at best be optimised for some target user groups.

An app that does not work in tandem with existing machinery for law enforcement and public safety is a bad idea.

In the end, the “technical” problems may actually be problems of economic disparity. Making it mandatory for people to own phones equipped with certain hardware or requiring them to upgrade to more reliable devices would drive the phones out of the financial reach of many. Indian manufacturers have expressed concerns that the proposed panic button would raise costs for them as well the end buyers. Popularising a downloadable app and informing its target users how to install and work it correctly needs a marketing blitzkrieg, which is something only the state or well-funded developers can afford. The New Delhi police department runs a dedicated control room for reports arriving from its safety app, Himmat (the word for courage in many Indian languages). It’s an expensive affair.

An app that does not work in tandem with existing machinery for law enforcement and public safety is a bad idea. It puts the onus of “keeping women safe” on members of their social circles or on intermediaries and private parties such as cab companies, while absolving law enforcement agencies of their failing to provide security. It opens doors to victim blaming in case someone is unable to use the app at the right time in the right way, or if the app fails.

On the contrary, an app that does loop in the police raises concerns about surveillance and protection of data available to the police, which is especially problematic in places such as India where there is no law for privacy or data protection. Alwar, one of the cities where Pukar was implemented, is super-populated with a large geographical area and a high crime rate. Police departments in such places tend to be overworked and understaffed. Without significant policing reforms, it is questionable whether they will be able to respond in time. A sting operation done by two media outlets on 30 senior officials of the New Delhi police department in 2012 showed the cops blaming victims of sexual violence with gay abandon. “If girls don't stay within their boundaries, if they don't wear appropriate clothes, then naturally there is attraction. This attraction makes men aggressive, prompting them to just do it [sexual assault]," reads one of their nuggets. “It's never easy for the victim [to complain to the police]. Everyone is scared of humiliation. Everyone's wary of media and society. In reality, the ones who complain are only those who have turned rape into a business," goes another. An app that lets known people monitor someone’s location also poses the risk of abuse, coercion and surveillance by intimate partners or members of the family.

Unfortunately, there is no app for reforming a morass in law enforcement or dismantling patriarchy.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/gender-it-rohini-lakshane-may-19-2016-womens-safety-there-is-an-app-for-that

Women on Covid lists get lewd calls and messages

praskrishna — 2021-05-24T06:35:20Z

Perverts are eating into precious time in the middle of a pandemic and adding to the overall anxiety.

Women are getting lewd calls and messages when they share their phone numbers to seek and offer pandemic-related help.

On April 15, Shasvathi Siva tweeted about how her number, shared on blood donation and social media groups, received obscene photos and video calls from strangers.

When she spoke about the harassment on Instagram, she ended up receiving more abuse from men.

With the second wave of the pandemic raging, many patients and families are turning to social media to search for medicines, oxygen, and even hospital beds.

Ambika Tandon, senior researcher, Centre for Internet and Society, says, “There are many stories of how prominent and outspoken women like journalists and activists have received hate speech and messages threatening violence.” What is shocking, she says, is not the harassment, but that it is not stopping even during a medical emergency.

Click to read the complete coverage in Deccan Herald on May 21, 2022.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/deccan-herald-may-21-2021-krupa-joseph-women-on-covid-lists-get-lewd-calls-and-messages

Women in the IT Industry: Request for Data

jdine — 2013-03-06T10:52:00Z

For CIS's research on indicators of female economic empowerment in the IT industry in India, we have sent formal request for participation in a short survey to the six largest IT companies based in India. A copy of the letter of request and survey as well as some details of the request for data can be found in this post.

Click to see the Letter of Survey Request and the Income Bracket Form

As introduced in an earlier blog, CIS has begun a short research project on female employees in the IT industry in India. This project aims to gather quantitative and qualitative data on women employed by the six largest Indian software companies in order to generate insight into whether or not these employers foster workplaces that are conducive to female economic empowerment. We have decided to gather some very basic quantitative data for this project by directly asking each of these companies to provide some information on data points that we deemed important indicators of women-friendly workplaces. This request has been carried out via post and, when possible, electronic mail.

In this letter of request, we have asked each of the companies to provide information on the number of women they employ, how much paid leave employees are allocated per month and per year, whether or not they have any complaints committees in place as per the Vishaka guidelines, and whether or not they offer any support for childcare or childcare services on their worksites.

Further, we also requested that they complete a form listing ascending monthly incomes (from below Rs. 19,999 to above Rs. 1.5 crore) by filling in how many female and male employees they employ in each income bracket. A copy of the letter and the form are attached to this blog post.

Each of these letters was addressed to the Chief Human Resources Officer (or equivalent title) at the corporate headquarters, and mailed as Registered Post, Acknowledgement Due on February the 19^th, 2013. We plan to send two more copies of this letter on the same date for the next two months.

The contacts and addresses that these letters were sent to are listed below. All of this information was gathered from publicly available sources.

Tech Mahindra Ltd.:
Contact:
Sujitha Karnad - Senior Vice President: HR & QMG for IT Services
Address:
Tech Mahindra Limited, Department of Human Resources
Sharda Centre, Off Karve Road,
Pune 411004, Maharashtra
India

Mahindra Satyam:
Contact:
Hari Thalapalli - Chief Marketing Officer and Chief People Officer
Address:
Satyam Computer Services Limited, Department of Human Resources
Mahindra Satyam Technology Center
Survey No.62/1A, Qutubullapaur Mandal
Bahadurpally Village, RR Dist
Hyderabad 500043

HCL Technologies Ltd.:
Contact:
Prithvi Shergill - Chief Human Resources Officer
Address:
HCL Technologies Limited, Department of Human Resources
A-104, Sector 58, Noida
Uttar Pradesh, 201 303
India

Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.:
Contact:
Ajoyendra Mukherjee - Executive Vice President & Head, Global Human Resources
Address:
Tata Consultancy Services, Department of Human Resources
TCS House,
Raveline street,
Fort, Mumbai, 400 001
India

Infosys Ltd.:
Contact:
Nandita Gurjar - Group Head of Human Resources
Address:
Infosys Limited, Department of Human Resources
Electronics City, Hosur Road
Bangalore, 560 100
India

Wipro Ltd.:
Contact:
Pratik Kumar - Executive Vice President, Human Resources
Address:
Wipro Limited, Department of Human Resources
Doddakannelli
Sarjapur Road
Bangalore, 560 035
India

Further, emails were sent out and calls were made to the media contacts of each company requesting the contact information (email addresses in particular) of any relevant HR personnel and/or any individuals that may be able to provide us with the requested information. From the information gathered in this exercise, various Human Resources staff members from Wipro, HCL Technologies and TCS received the appeal to provide the requested information via email on the 11^th of February.

We have not yet received any replies to either the email or post requests for information.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/women-in-the-it-industry

Women in love with Facebook

praskrishna — 2011-05-27T11:35:51Z

There’s one thing these days that determines the passion of the modern Indian woman: their ever-growing love affair with the internet. The article by L Subramani was published in the Deccan Herald on May 27, 2011.

The sight of women updating their Facebook status, tweeting or checking their emails on the move makes it apparently clear that women, more than men, take to internet and in particular to social networking.

Global researches have lent credence to the phenomena that women are either obsessed or even addicted to Facebook and other social networking sites, suggesting that a third of women aged 18 to 34 check their Facebook pages when they wake up in the morning before even going to the toilet, while 21 per cent of those in the same age group check the social networking site before going to bed.

Alarmingly, the same study, by UK-based Oxygen Media and Lightspeed Research-also suggest that 42 per cent from the same age group have no problems posting pictures of them drunk on Facebook.

"I’ve been on Facebook for about a year and a half,” admitted 26-year-old Kate who doesn’t like to tell her real name. “It has sort of become a regular thing. Apart from attending meetings or on important work, I quite naturally check the posts others have made and regularly update my status on FB."

Personal space

She denies that Facebook has gradually crawled into her personal life or could have even contributed to her remaining single. "It’s ridiculous (to say that FB has an impact on my life). I think it’s the best way to catch up with friends and family."

Smartphones with Facebook apps and growing usage of the internet on mobile phones have also opened up the possibility of logging on to social networking sites often and on the move and quite naturally, tech savvy urban women are taken into it, according to cyber researchers.

A cursory glance at many of the dating sites also suggest that women of all ages use the relative anonymity to reach out to new friends or to talk their minds out. Surprisingly, a few of them are also from small towns and places not on the radar for prolific internet usage.

A recent study by Google to understand the profiles of people using various internet browsers suggested that nearly 36 per cent of Indian women are using Chrome — Google’s own browser — for its seemingly faster performance that would make updating Facebook status or accessing videos and photos much easier.

"Women mostly use the internet for accessing entertainment and would like it to be fast,” Nikhil Rungta, country marketing head, Google India said. “It became clear that most of them use Chrome either for social networking or accessing multimedia or entertainment content."

However, Nishant Shah, a researcher on cyber behaviour and director of research at Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Research, is sceptical about the numbers. "There aren’t any specific studies to suggest that Indian women are on social networking more than men," he said.

"This doesn’t look possible when researches have shown that men outnumber women in overall internet usage. It may even be possible that many men are posing as women in social networking sites."

Bangalore-based writer and social commentator Vaasanthi feels that social networking provides the space women always look for. “It may be called ‘Facebook’, but you aren’t talking to a real face. This gives the freedom and the courage for women to freely express themselves,” she said.

"Given that most women today come from nuclear families, they actually don’t have that many people to talk to in real world. The virtual world provides them what they can’t get in real world."

She also said there is no need to feel alarmed about the Facebook phenomenon. "Facebook or social networking phenomenon is a new change and any change would initially cause concerns. But surely this would fade away," she said.

Read the original here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/women-love-facebook

Women Arrested in Mumbai for Complaining on Facebook

praskrishna — 2012-11-21T11:32:04Z

For over 30 hours following the death of the Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray on Saturday, stores throughout Mumbai closed their shutters and taxis and autorickshaws stayed off the streets.

This article by Neha Thirani and Hari Kumar was published in New York Times on November 19, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

While analysts throughout Mumbai debated whether the citywide shutdown following the death of Mr. Thackeray was inspired by fear or respect, one 21-year-old woman and her friend were arrested for raising a similar question.

On Sunday, the police in Palghar, in Thane district, on the outskirts of Mumbai, arrested Shaheen Dhadha after she posted a status update on Facebook that questioned the shutdown, also known as a bandh. A local daily, the Mumbai Mirror, reported that Ms. Dhadha, 21, had written, "People like Thackeray are born and die daily and one should not observe a bandh for that." The police also arrested her friend who "liked" the post, whom NDTV identified by her first name, Renu.

The women were arrested under Section 505 of the Indian Penal Code for “statements creating or promoting enmity, hatred or ill will between classes.” Srikant Pingle, station house in charge of the Palghar police, told India Ink that the local Shiv Sena chief, whom he identified as “Mr. Bhushan,” filed the complaint against Ms. Dhadha because her comment on Facebook hurt Shiv Sena’s sentiments. Mr. Pingle declined to comment further on the details of the arrests.

Sudhir Gupta, the defense counsel for the two women, told NDTV, “Their posts don’t incite violence. It can’t be said they have made any derogatory remarks. They don’t belong to any political ideology.”

In a phone conversation with India Ink, a police officer of the Palghar station, who identified himself only as Gavali, said that the arrest took place on Sunday night and that the pair had been taken to court on Monday.

The two women, who were sentenced to 14 days in jail by the court, received bail after a bond of 15,000 rupees ($270) was paid, reported NDTV.

The Times of India reported that a mob of 2,000 Shiv Sena workers vandalized her uncle’s orthopedic clinic in Palghar. Repeated calls made to the Dhada orthopedic hospital in Thane went unanswered, while Harshal Pradhan, a Shiv Sena spokesman, said that he was unaware of the incident.

A police officer at the Palghar Police Station, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that no one has been arrested in the attack on the clinic.

Pranesh Prakash, program manager with the Center for Internet and Society, said the arrests of the two women were a violation of free speech and the misapplication of the law. “There were thousands of people on Facebook, Twitter and in person who were saying the exact same kinds of things that this girl is alleged to have said,” said Mr. Prakash. “And the fact that only she and one other person who liked that comment have been arrested shows a clear arbitrariness in the application of the law.”

In an open letter addressed to the chief minister of Maharashtra, the former Supreme Court Judge Markandey Katju defended the two women, saying, “To my mind it is absurd to say that protesting against a bandh hurts religious sentiments.” He further said that the arrest appears to be a criminal act as it is a crime to wrongfully arrest or wrongfully confine someone who has committed no crime.

On social networking sites, people came out in support of Ms. Dhadha and her friend. The Facebook group “Ban Shiv Sena” had about 36,400 "likes" as of Monday afternoon, while the party’s official Facebook page had just under 2,700. On Twitter, several commenters expressed solidarity with the two women, including Milind Deora, the government minister of state, communications and information technology, who said, "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize ~ Voltaire."

In Maharashtra, Shiv Sena has a history of banning books, movies and other popular culture that are critical of the political party. In 2010, Rohinton Mistry’s book, "Such a Long Journey," was withdrawn from the syllabus of Mumbai University after Shiv Sena officials complained that the book insulted Bal Thackeray. Ironically, in a January 2007 interview with Shekhar Gupta, the editor in chief of The Indian Express, Mr. Thackeray said that what differentiated him from the mafia is that journalists and others were free to disagree with him and criticize him.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/india-blogs-nytimes-nov-19-2012-neha-thirani-hari-kumar-women-arrested-in-mumbai-for-complaining-on-facebook

Women arrested for Facebook post: Did cops act under Sena pressure?

praskrishna — 2012-11-21T11:17:37Z

After Bal Thackeray's death, during the Mumbai Bandh, a 21-year-old criticised the shutdown on her Facebook page — her friend approved of it — next thing they know, they are facing a case, and this morning they were arrested.

YP Singh, Alyque Padamsee, Rohan Joshi, Karuna Nundy and Pranesh Prakash took part in a discussion about the arrest of two girls over a Facebook comment. The discussion was aired in NDTV on November 19, 2012.

The anchor asked Pranesh Prakash:

Who are these people scrolling through people's Facebook posts and Twitter accounts, finding these comments and taking action?

Pranesh Prakash said that it could be anyone. The reality is doesn't really matter because the laws are written in such a way that if it is public and stuff that is on Facebook for different purposes can either be public or private, if it is public these laws can very often apply and that is a problem. We haven't quite figured out to what extent these laws apply. The IT Act section 66A for instance, is unconstitutional, section 295 A which has been applied, and section 505 which also seems to have been applied in this case make it a clear case of misappropriation of those provisions. These kind of arrests will happen. It doesn't quite matter if we have right laws at one level and it clearly doesn't help if we have bad laws. What we need to do at least in part to remedy the situation is to amend the IT Act to make it consonant and consistent with civil and political rights and to do so in multi-stakeholder fashion involving civil society, industry and government. Right now it doesn't protect privacy and freedom of speech as much as it should.

Watch the full video aired on NDTV

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/ndtv-video-ndtv-special-ndtv-24x7

Woman Alleges Harassment at Major International Conference

praskrishna — 2016-03-30T17:06:10Z

A prospective lawyer's name tag was flipped, and she was asked rude questions by a CEO at a conference, where, ironically enough, she was invited to devise sexual harassment policies.

The article by Kavita Patil was published in Bangalore Mirror on March 30, 2016.

Padmini Baruah, 22, a National Law School of India University (NLSIU) student representing Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), at the ICANN55 (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) held at Marrakech, alleged that she was sexually harassed by Khaled Fattal, the chairman and CEO of The Multilingual Internet Group.

On March 2, Baruah had reached out to the conference ombudsman and expressed her concerns about the lack of a specific sexual harassment policy. She was directed to the ICANN55's Standards of Behavior, who invited her for a discussion at the conference in Marrakech.

About three hours before her meeting with the ombudsman on March 6, she had a shock. "I was, unfortunately, subjected to sexual harassment in the nature of verbal remarks and infringement of my personal space by the perpetrator in question, a man I eventually came to know was called Khaled Fattal," she recalled. "Fattal approached me, pulled at my name tag, examined it and dropped it. A little later, he lifted my name tag and flipped it back and forth asking me, "Where are you from?"

He then leaned in, lecherously looked at me and asked, "Do you know how to make a cheese sandwich?" I was taken aback and responded angrily saying, "Yes, that is why I came here, to make you cheese sandwiches." He went on to throw another lecherous look my way and said, "Well, I love veg sandwiches."

Sunil Abraham, executive director of the CIS, said, "ICANN doesn't have a special cell where complaints can be raised but they have an ombudsman. The ombudsman is investigating the case and is in touch with both Baruah and also the perpetrator." He said after she raised the sexual harassment complaint, he received many mails from women who had faced harassment at the event but never made an attempt to raise their voice. "Through CIS we have issued a public statement of support for Baruah and we are waiting for the result of the investigation," he said.

Fattal and the ombudsman were not available for comment despite repeated attempts made by BM to get a response. Baruah, meanwhile, was informed by the ombudsman that her's was the first harassment case reported in the history of ICANN.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bangalore-mirror-march-30-2016-kavita-patil-woman-alleges-harassment-at-major-international-conference

Without stringent law, threats to Mark Zuckerberg are hollow: Experts

Admin — 2018-03-25T02:24:12Z

IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Wednesday warned Facebook and other social networks of tough action, if they attempted to influence the Indian elections.

The article by Alnoor Peermohamed and Karan Choudhury was published in the Business Standard on March 23, 2018.

The best way of keeping a check on the manipulation of elections through campaigns on Facebook is by introducing a strong data protection policy, said experts. After the Cambridge Analytica row, all eyes are on the use of such tools during the upcoming general election in India.

Union Law and Information Technology (IT) Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Wednesday warned Facebook and other social networks of tough action, if they attempted to influence the Indian elections. However, experts said these threats are hollow because the current law protecting user data lacks teeth.

“Without a strong data protection law, we wouldn't quite be able to take any action as what has happened is not a breach. While Section 43A of the IT Act talks about lack of consent from the users, it does not spell out any consequence for violating the same,” said Pranesh Prakash, policy director at think tank The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS). “Essentially, it's a toothless tiger.”

Having a data protection law might not directly stop firms from buying data from third-party developers and then deploying it for targeted users, but it is a great pre-emptive measure to stop unnecessary data collection. If users are asked to give consent for their data, it would vastly reduce the risk.

“The government's statement would be well supported, if it would be bringing a law, listening to key voices of experts and civil society. Even though the Justice Srikrishna Committee is currently examining and is expected to come out with a draft law, the timeline, transparency and willingness to safeguard user rights need to be better demonstrated,” said Apar Gupta, an independent lawyer.

Other experts have voiced their concerns over allowing tech giants to take sensitive user data out of the country. Once the data is out of India's jurisdiction, there is no way to ensure these companies are following the laws mandated by the government.

“Facebook is not an Indian company. We do not know how far it is complying with India’s IT Act. We should not be compromising on security and allow tech firms to play in the market without complying with the laws,” says Pavan Duggal, cyber law expert and Supreme Court advocate.

While both the Congress and the BJP have accused each other of working with Cambridge Analytica and denied their own affiliation with the company, the UK-based firm was already functioning in India through its partner Ovleno Business Intelligence (OBI). The OBI website, which has now been taken down, had listed the BJP, the Congress and Janata Dal (United) as its clients.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-alnoor-peermohamed-and-karan-choudhury-without-stringent-law-threats-to-mark-zuckerberg-are-hollow-experts

With power, phone and internet services affected, Chennai is still recovering from Cyclone Vardah

praskrishna — 2016-12-20T16:50:27Z

Nearly a week after Cyclone Vardah rattled the city, bringing normal life to a halt for a few days, Chennai is still reeling from the aftershock of the powerful storm.

The blog post by Vinita Govindarajan and Sruthisagar Yamunan was published by Scroll.in on December 20, 2016 quoted Udbhav Tiwari

With powerful winds that blew up to the speed of 120 kmph, around one lakh trees were estimated to have have been uprooted across the city by the cyclone, causing a loss of almost one-fourth of the city’s foliage, reported The Hindu. Many of these trees fell on transmission lines, damaging them severely and cutting power supply to scores of residential areas.

Employees of Chennai’s city corporation and electricity board were seen hard at work throughout the week, clearing the streets of fallen trees and repairing electricity lines. But with frequent power cuts and sporadic phone and internet signals, the city is still on the long route to restoration.

A senior official of the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board said that their personnel have been working every hour to ensure that normalcy returns to the city as soon as possible. “We have restored power to over 80% of Chennai,” he said. “The rest is also get intermittent power. By Monday morning, the whole city would be covered.”

Slow business

For Senthil Kumar, who runs a tiffin business in East Tambaram in South Chennai, there was no power from Monday, when the cyclone stuck, till Saturday morning. “For three days after the cyclone, we couldn’t open our shop,” he said. “On Friday, we decided to get the food prepared outside and bring it here. We served dosas and idlis without chutney and only sambhar. We’ve lost a week’s business. But you can’t blame the government. They have done well to restore everything so quickly.”

Local businesses depending on internet and phone lines to receive orders were also deeply affected. Moremilaga, a hyperlocal startup that delivers homemade food to customers across the city, said that even though they did not receive their usual number of orders over phone and internet, they managed to surprise their regular customers with packets of food.

“Many of the people who we give food to are elderly people,” said Ragini Murali, who is in-charge of the start-up’s operations. “We felt really bad that we could not give them food for a day because they cannot cook on their own or buy from a store. They depend on our food and were very relieved when we delivered food even when they could not reach us.”

Business is slowly coming back to normal except that now Moremilaga is receiving only 20% of its orders through internet, whereas earlier it was 50%, said Viji Ganesh, the founder of the enterprise.

Maligai Kadai, an online grocery delivery business in Chennai, was shut from Monday through Wednesday. Satish Sundaram, founder of Maligai Kadai, said that the online store hardly received any orders this week because of internet problems across the city. But he said that even delivery of orders placed prior to the storm was a problem.

“We couldn’t do anything,” said Sundaram. “We had to postpone the delivery of orders placed on Sunday because many of our customers left the city immediately after the storm. In other cases, we could not reach our customers on phone to find out if their area was accessible. If the roads were blocked with fallen trees, we would have to come back all the way.”

Why no internet?

Five days after the storm, communication signals were still erratic. Airtel subscribers across the country received messages that the cyclone in Chennai had affected one of their undersea network cables which in turn might slow down internet speeds. Subscribers to BSNL, Vodafone and other telecommunication operators were also facing similar difficulties.

The reason for this slow speed, explained Udbhav Tiwari, a policy officer at The Centre for Internet and Society, was that operators were having to reroute their traffic to other undersea cables that travel using longer, convoluted routes.

“The data takes long to travel, since it does not travel efficiently enough,” he said. “So if you search for something on the internet, it will open only after a minute because the packet had to travel the other three-fourth of the world to reach you instead of the shortest route.”

Undersea cables, Tiwari explained, are usually owned by a combination of telecom companies as well as companies whose sole job is to lay these cables and rent them to individuals who will run their traffic through them.

These companies map out a route decided by demand between certain key points, hire a ship that trawls the ocean sea floor and lays and maintains cables, he said.

For the entirety of Asia, the Singaporean and Japanese region are the main hubs for internet exchange, Tiwari said, since they are considered reliable and commercially viable.

“Undersea cables almost always end in big cites,“ Tiwari said, “because of the infrastructure required to operate them. On the eastern side of India, Chennai is one of the best places to set up an end point for an undersea cable since it is a metropolitan city and closer to hubs like Japan and Singapore.”

If one of these lines near Chennai are broken, he said, it is very likely that the data would slow down because they have to find alternative routes.

“A severe cyclone or tsunami definitely has the potential to disturb or snap these sea cables,” Tiwari said. “But if maintenance is not carried out on them regularly enough, they can break for far more mundane reasons such as high water pressure, rust, debris falling from other ships or even sea animals.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/scroll-in-vinita-govindarajan-shrutisagar-yamunan-with-power-phone-and-internet-services-affected-chennai-is-still-recovering-from-cyclone-vardah

With digitisation at the forefront, government departments need to be cautious about digital security

praskrishna — 2017-05-20T08:33:37Z

The huge leak of Aadhar data from four websites belonging to a central ministry and the Andhra Pradesh government has been on the government radar for a while. The leak, caused by poor security protocols, had left around 130 million numbers and their allied information, like bank and post office account details, open to access for several months. As the last website finally plugged loophole, violation echoed in Supreme Court.

The blog post by Manas Pratap Singh was published by NDTV on May 4, 2017.

Deliberate revelation of Aadhaar can lay people open to financial fraud and it is a punishable offence and this is what the Electronics and Information ministry has reminded all government departments.

"Aadhaar numbers and demographic information and other sensitive personal data" collected by "ministries/departments, state departments" have been published online, read a letter from the ministry dated April 24.

Such publishing, it added, "is in clear contravention of the provisions of the Aadhaar Act 2016 and constitutes an offence punishable with imprisonment upto 3 years". Such outing of financial information is also a violation of IT Act, it said.

Besides asking web managers to sensitise the ministries, the letter also said that display of such information be stopped immediately.

On May 1, a report by non-profit research organisation Centre for Internet & Society said two of the websites from where the data leak took place, belongs to the Union Ministry of Rural Development.

One stored data for the MNREGA - the mammoth Central scheme for rural employment which caters to 25.46 crore people. The other was the National Social Assistance Programme, another Central scheme under which pension is provided to the elderly people, widows and persons with disabilities.

Amber Sinha, co-author of the CIS report, told NDTV, "For portals that had not masked data, we informed the relevant authorities and asked them to take down the available information."

The Rural Development ministry has now decided to form an expert group on IT and cyber security, which will be headed by Kiran Karnik, a former chief of Nasscom. The ministry, however, is yet to comment on the data leak.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/ndtv-may-4-2017-manas-pratap-singh-government-knew-of-mega-aadhaar-leak-ministries-were-warned

WISER Lecture : Sumandro Chattapadhyay on Deregulation by Code

praskrishna — 2017-03-29T11:48:08Z

University of the Witwatersrand organized a talk by Sumandro Chattapadhyay on Derugulation by Code on March 8, 2017 in Johannesburg.

On November 08, 2017, the Government of India initiated a demonetisation process. It involved cancellation of Rs. 500 and Rs. 1,000 currency notes as legal tender, establishing of a time bound process for the notes to be returned to the banks, announcement of specific emergency services (such as hospitals and utilities) for which the canceled notes could still be used, and introduction of a new Rs. 2,000 note. While the purpose of the demonetisation move was publicly articulated in terms of removal of unaccounted wealth held in cash form, the state narrative quickly moved to being primarily focused on promotion of various forms of digital payments, especially mobile-based payments. The notion of a "WhatsApp moment" in Indian banking in particular, and in Asian banking in general, has been in circulation since 2015. Nandan Nilekani, a significant technocrat politician of India who has been CEO of Infosys (a major Indian IT company) and the Chairman of the UID/Aadhaar project, was one of the first persons to take note of this upcoming "revolution". In a lecture given by him on August 21, 2015, he described the technological and market forces, enabled by policy decision, that are going to disrupt the Indian banking landscape.

Sumandro's lecture discussed the linkages between this WhatsApp moment and the demonetisation move, and locate them in the context of institutional and technological changes happening in the Indian banking sector since 2008. The talk focused on the development and proliferation of the Unified Payments Interface - an universal, private-owned, government-backed, mobile-to-mobile payment infrastructure - as the key instrument through which the ongoing deregulation of banking in India is being driven.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/wiser-lecture-sumandro-chattapadhyay-on-deregulation-by-code