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SOTM Asia 2018

Admin — 2018-11-28T01:22:44Z

Saumyaa Naidu, Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon attend State of the Map 2018 conference co-organized by the Centre for Internet & Society and Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore on November 17 and 18, 2018.

State of the Map Asia 2018 featured two full days of talks, workshops, an opening and closing keynote. It was an exciting two days! The program was created by curating proposals from the community and through a scoring process by the committee.

The program was held at the Indian Institude of Management campus in Bangalore. Much of the program was between two auditoriums. We also had plenty of space set aside for breakout sessions and birds of a feather meetups. (Click here to download the program.)

Click here to see the agenda

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/sotm-asia-2018

Sorry, Business Closed until Internet is Back On

Nalanda Tambe — 2017-12-19T16:25:24Z

Strap: Exporters say they lose face with international clients when internet shutdowns block deliveries.

Vadodara, Gujarat: A household name in Vadodara, Jagdish Farshan has been famous for Gujarati snacks like Leelo Chevdo and Bakarwadi since 1938. Since the year 2000, they started exporting their snacks to the millions of Gujaratis settled across the globe, especially in Africa, USA, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. It is one of the many indigenous businesses that helps Gujarat contribute 25% of the total exports from India. But the outfit synonymous with both tradition and modernity for 79 years, was also one of the many exporters to receive an unexpected jolt in August 2015, during the week-long internet shutdown during the Patidar protests for reservations across the state.

Kalpesh Kandoi, the chairman of Jagdish Farshan Pvt Ltd says, “Gujaratis in various countries buy our snacks online through our website, or through email. During the internet ban, we suffered quite a lot due to the blockage of orders and failure of deliveries.” Since nearly 50% of their annual revenue comes from exports, the shutdown threw a significant spanner in the works. Although the government claims it banned only mobile data, many businesses admit to their broadband and WiFi also being hit, or seeing debilitating delays.

“Of course, if there is an emergency from the importers’ side, they can call us directly,” says Kandoi. “But then again, a kind of inconvenience is created to them from our side, which is very shameful. It destroys our trustworthiness and credibility.” Many of their production centres in Gujarat, especially Vadodara, fell back on meeting orders when bank payments were stuck, or orders weren't accessible. Thankfully for the company, its manufacturing unit in Australia was able to meet at least some of the international orders when most districts of Gujarat couldn't access the internet.

The ban seems to have had a domino effect outside India too. Preeti Shah, who imports snacks and sweets from Jagdish Farshan through her small home-based business in the USA, couldn't meet orders there during the internet ban in Gujarat. She told 101reporters on the phone from Philadelphia that when she started her business of selling Gujarati snacks 3 years ago, she marketed her service by calling her neighbours, friends and acquaintances personally. “I found that in return they emailed me their snack orders,” says Shah. “During the internet blockages in India, I had to apologise for not delivering the snacks to my clients because my orders were not fulfilled by the Gujarat-based exporters.” She lost 12 to 15 clients, most of them regulars. “The government has to realise the impact of the ban. What if I had lost all my clients just because of the internet ban?” she asks.

Gujarat is a major hub for several industries like dairy, automobile, gems, and pharmaceuticals, but its biggest exports are of cotton yarn, oilseeds, and seafood. With its highly advanced and well-equipped marine fish production techniques, it is able to export fish to UAE, Australia, USA, Japan, China, Canada, Brazil, Thailand, and Germany. Gems and jewellery too, though exported from Mumbai, are processed in Surat, Gujarat, one of the largest diamond hubs in the world. Already severely hit by demonetisation in November 2016, with large-scale closures, layoffs and losses, the diamond industry nearly buckled under the internet ban too.

Most of all, it is the unpredictable, ad hoc, and unannounced nature of the internet shutdowns that frustrates exporters, who liken it to annoying roadblocks traffic policemen install to allow VIP movement. For instance, in February 2016, the state suspended mobile internet services suddenly for four hours to prevent cheating during a revenue service exam.

Chandresh Shah, president of the Exporters and Importers (Exim) Club and the founder of Madhav Agro Foods, says that the entire export industry relies on the internet for over 95% of its business. “It is absurd on the part of government to ban internet for any reason especially when they know that it will hamper exporters to a great extent. They have to provide alternatives, or announce beforehand. People who are importing our products consider us unprofessional and we look foolish in the international markets. So such policies need to be revamped and rationalised properly.” He adds that the rising economic cost of such shutdowns must be factored in. A 2016 study by Brookings Institution that looked at 81 instances of internet shutdowns across 19 countries between July 2015 and June 2016 found that they had cost the world economy a total of $2.4 billion. India, at a conservative estimate of $968 million due to 22 shutdowns (as much as Iraq), was one of the biggest losers.

As the digital economy grows, the cost of frequent internet shutdowns will only accelerate. As the central government pushed the ‘Make in India’ initiative, Surat-based Falguni Patel (name changed) was inspired to start an online boutique in late 2014. A textiles student and first-time entrepreneur, she invested nearly Rs 10 lakhs ($15,600) through loans and savings. Unfortunately, a few months into her business, an internet ban was put in place. “It was a sheer coincidence that I received an order from Madhya Pradesh, along with an advance payment, just two days before the week-long internet ban. After that they mailed me four times – first with some requirements, then two follow-up emails and a final one demanding a refund of the advance –but I didn’t receive any of these due to the ban. Meanwhile, I used the advance to purchase raw materials needed.” After the ban was lifted, Patel realised what had happened. “When I called them personally and explained the situation, they called me unprofessional. When I said I would repay their money in 3-4 instalments, they filed a police complaint against me for theft.” Only a single order had turned bad, but it delivered a strong enough blow. Discouraged by the experience, and pressured by her parents who didn't want her to invest in the business anymore, Patel shut her website, and shelved her e-commerce dreams.

Some companies, like Dinesh Mills, one of Vadodara’s oldest textile companies, prevented losses by invoking their brand value and stepping up customer relations during the ban. Uday Shitole, General Manager – Sales, at Dinesh Mills, says the internet is a boon for the export industry due to its speed, web orders, low cost, and proper documentation. But he admits that in India, it's mandatory to have traditional back-up systems, even if this is much costlier, because political realities make even something as advanced as the internet unpredictable. Sudhir Purohit, Vice President (Exports), Dinesh Mills Ltd, says their decade-long relationships with suppliers and purchasers, initiated in the pre-internet days, stood the company in good stead. “We export the materials through digital orders too, but in our system, the negotiation of contracts has to be handled in person and non-negotiable ones can be done wholly through the internet. Without this, we will be vulnerable to any disruption, like internet ban, or accidents, that will definitely lead to delays and losses.”

Nalanda Tambe is a Vadodara- based freelance writer and a member 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/sorry-business-closed-until-internet-is-back-on

SOPA: The bill that could kill the Internet

praskrishna — 2011-11-18T07:26:30Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sony site flaw puts focus on Internet security

praskrishna — 2011-05-30T13:15:07Z

INTERNET security has once again come into sharp focus with Sony discovering a loophole in their website set up to reset passwords for its users affected by the hacking of the PlayStation network. Shayan Ghosh's article was published by Mail Today on Friday,May 20, 2011.

Sony on Thursday announced that it has found a security flaw on its website that could have allowed a hacker access to private details of its gaming buffs.

"We are in the process of continuous restoration of the website loopholes that have been identified and it will be healed pretty soon," said Atindriya Bose, country manager at Sony Computer Entertainment.

Last month, Sony’s PlayStation network was hacked and user data such as email ids and credit card details were possibly stolen in huge numbers, affecting users worldwide.

"Some users could say botnets (a collection of infected computers or those taken over by hackers) are the largest threat today because they have the potential of shutting down websites, online stores and even Governmental websites and critical resources," Costin Raiu, director of the global research and analysis team, Kaspersky Lab, said, explaining the present online threat scenario.

"Others say that a much more serious threat can come from mobile malware, because there are a lot more mobile phones than computer systems," he noted.

"Even though hacking is going on we are prompt to enhance our security measures. But only these won’t help. The Indian users also need to be conscious; they also need to be vigilant about private details such as credit cards when they are on the web," Bose explained.

"A lot of companies are successful in e-commerce and have been in the industry for quite long. But regarding such flaws, it depends on how fast the company reacts to the situation," he said.

Hacking is like an arms race, according to Sunil Abraham executive director, Centre for Internet and Society. "It is going side by side with the security measures that people are taking," he said.

Abraham said there are many reasons behind the recent rise in hacking with data being stolen very often.

Firstly, the information system nowadays is more complex though not mature enough to handle such threats. Secondly, the social networking sites are a key player when it comes to damage undergone due to hacking. The level of data loss is huge when one hacks a social networking site which, was not the case before. Thirdly, new updates of these networking and gaming sites are released very frequently, which leaves little time to check the security flaws in the website.

"New features are more prone to attacks," Abraham said.

"As attackers become more sophisticated and targeted, hacking continues to be a serious threat. In fact, Symantec’s Internet Security Threat Report 16 revealed that an average of 260,000 identities were exposed per data breach caused by hacking in 2010, nearly quadruple that of any other cause," Abhijit Limaye, director, security response, Symantec, said.

However, there are ethical hackers who feel the need for security and also think that hacking will be a major issue worldwide, in a couple of years.

Download the original article published by Mail Today here [PDF, 2.08 MB]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/sony-site-flaw

Some Key Words Are Missing

praskrishna — 2015-09-27T14:22:44Z

Google manipulating search results? The Competition Commission is on its case.

The article by Arindam Mukherjee was published in Outlook on September 21, 2015. Nehaa Chaudhari was quoted.

G’s Global Woes

Google’s problems aren’t restricted to India. It is facing similar cases around the world.

Europe: The search giant has been accused of using its dominant position on the web to dominate the market for online product searches. There’s another probe on possible abuse of dominant position with Android.

Brazil: Is being investigated for favouring its own services over others on the internet

Hong Kong & Argentina: Facing issues about collecting user data

Spain: Had to shut down Google News over copyright issues.

Germany: Its Google Street View navigation service got into problems over privacy issues

Mexico: The local regulator has brought up issues similar to those in Europe

There is an uneasy calm at Google’s India offices these days. Spokespersons are giving measured statements, watched over by an army of lawyers who are busy looking at the finer points. A case against Google’s advertising and search practices with the Competition Commission of India (CCI) has the potential to derail the search giant’s operations in India. Why, a nervous Google has even sought to make hearings in this case in-camera to totally shut out the media.

There is a lot at stake. An investigation report of the CCI has found Google squarely guilty of abusing its dominant position to manipulate search results on the internet and online advertising results to its own advantage and to those of companies paying for it. Google was found to “have abused its dominant position in the relevant markets of online general web search service in India and online search advertising in India in violation of the Competition Act 2002”.

Indeed, the report (which has been reviewed by Outlook) is blunt on many of the issues: “Google is found to be indulging in practices of search bias and by doing so it causes harm to its competitors as well as users.... Google steers users to its own products and services and produces biased results. This structure offers abundant opportunities for leveraging and has also raised issues of conflict of interest.” It says that through such practices Google was adversely affecting the competitive landscape in the markets for online general web search, search advertising as well as adjacent markets like travel, maps, social networking and e-commerce.

The whole brouhaha started with complaints from two parties—Chennai-based matchmaking portal Bharatmatrimony.com and Jaipur-based consumer rights organisation CUTS International—in 2012. “People who are subscribing to Google’s Adwords and are paying Google or are buying keywords are getting preference in their search results. Many of the search results on Google are either ads or sponsored links and not genuine search results. Google is pushing ads as news items which normal users would be unable to distinguish,” says Sharad Bhansali, managing partner, APJ SLG Law Offices which is representing CUTS.

CUTS also complained that Google was promoting its own products through search. Says Udai Singh Mehta, CUTS director, “Preference was being given by Google to its products and subsidiaries in search.” This, being a dominant player in search and online advertising, amounts to abusing its position. According to market estimates, Google enjoys a 93 per cent share of the search market and gets about 85 per cent of the revenues of online advertising. Says Nikhil Pahwa, editor-in-chief of Medianama: “In search cases, Google is clearly the dominant player in the market. So when they start integrating content into search, there is a problem and it becomes an issue.”

In the course of the investigation, the CCI D-G also sought opinion from about 30 companies—most of them gave similar feedback about Google’s practices. The list includes Flipkart, mapmyindia.com, makemytrip.com, Microsoft and Nokia Maps.

Google will now have to appear before the full CCI bench on September 17 for a hearing based on the D-G report. After this, the CCI will take a final call on the issue. Of course, Google can seek an extension of this hearing. According to company insiders, they have not sought an extension yet. Google will have the right to appeal any order the CCI comes out with. The first appeal would be at the court of a competition appellate tribunal headed by a retired SC judge. The final appeal can happen only with the Supreme Court.

As expected, Google denies any wrongdoing and says the abuse of dominant position will need to be proved. Manas Chaudhuri, lawyer with Khaitan & Co which deals with competition cases, told Outlook, “The report says that Google is dominant, which is correct. If it is dominant, there is nothing wrong under the Competition Act. The issue is whether or not it has abused its dominance. The ‘abuse’ is a rule-of-reason argument and as such the CCI will have to assess quite a few international best practices theories eg, ‘objective justification’, ‘analysing the statutory mandate of meeting the competition in the relevant market’, ‘consumer harm’ and ‘counterfactuals’.”

In response to queries, a Google spokesperson said, “We’re currently reviewing the report from the CCI’s ongoing investigation. We continue to work closely with the CCI and remain confident that we comply fully with India’s competition laws. Regulators and courts around the world, including in the US, Germany, Taiwan, Egypt and Brazil, have looked into and found no concerns on many of the issues raised in this report.” Actually, Google is facing a similar case in the EU, while similar issues have been raised in Brazil, Hong Kong, Argentina and Mexico.

Sure, at first blush, the report appears tilted against Google. What may go in its favour is the CCI’s dismal record in treating such cases. Though it is the final investigation report, experts say it is not sacrosanct: the CCI bench might not agree with it. In the last six years, over 20 such investigation reports have been dismissed by the CCI after the final hearing. And Google will try its best to bring forth the fact that it has been exonerated in similar cases in the US, Germany and Taiwan.

But with the D-G’s final investigation report giving a clear verdict against Google’s practices, it might not be so easy for the search giant to come out cleanly from this one. Says Nehaa Chaudhari, lawyer with the Centre for Internet and Society (cis), “Given that India is not the only jurisdiction where Google is using its secret algorithm to promote its own products, there is enough for the CCI to proceed on against it.” What will also help is the testimony of several companies who have said that they have suffered because of Google’s web practices.

The entire world is watching India. Clearly, if the CCI upholds the D-G report and pronounces Google guilty, it could seriously affect the search giant’s growth in India, one of the fastest growing internet markets for Google with over 300 million internet users and an even faster growing Android landscape (where also it is a dominant player). With the final EU verdict on the case yet to come out, will India set a new example for the world to follow?

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/outlook-september-21-2015-arindam-mukherjee-some-key-words-are-missing

Some Key Words Are Missing

praskrishna — 2016-10-23T01:40:12Z

Google manipulating search results? The Competition Commission is on its case.

The article by Arindam Mukherjee was published by Outlook on October 23, 2016. Nehaa Chaudhari was quoted.

G’s Global Woes

Google’s problems aren’t restricted to India. It is facing similar cases around the world.

Europe: The search giant has been accused of using its dominant position on the web to dominate the market for online product searches. There’s another probe on possible abuse of dominant position with Android.

Brazil: Is being investigated for favouring its own services over others on the internet

Hong Kong & Argentina: Facing issues about collecting user data

Spain: Had to shut down Google News over copyright issues.

Germany: Its Google Street View navigation service got into problems over privacy issues

Mexico: The local regulator has brought up issues similar to those in Europe

***

“In search cases, Google is clearly the dominant player. So when they integrate content into search, it’s a problem.”
Nikhil Pahwa, Medianama

Outlook’s cover from Oct 28, 2013

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/outlook-arindam-mukherjee-october-23-2016-some-key-words-are-missing

Some ISPs block Wordpress domain across India

praskrishna — 2012-08-26T15:16:30Z

Latest reports confirm that Tata Photon has blocked access to the Wordpress.com domain across India, following a government order to block web pages containing offensive content.

Published in tech 2 on August 25, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Apparently, the ISP has resorted to a blanket ban, blocking access to the entire site instead of clamping down on specific web pages carrying unacceptable content. Wordpress is accessible through other ISPs such as Airtel and Reliance. However, there is no clarity yet about any other ISP blocking out Wordpress entirely, and we are in the process of verifying this.

We find that the domain can be accessed through means such as free proxy websites when using a Tata Photon connection, which could indicate that the problem does not lie with the Wordpress server. Despite the inability to view Wordpress websites and blogs, those with registered accounts on Wordpress are able to log in to the website. Certain portions of the Dashboard or website backend are known to have been blocked, and what remains accessible is functioning very slowly for Tata Photon users. Users cannot edit or post new content at the moment, but can view sections such as the website's stats. However, this all-encompassing block seems to be affecting only the Wordpress.com platform and not Wordpress.org.

The error message that most users are coming to

A blogger by the name 'Anon and on' has written, “I can’t access any WordPress.com blog from home. Neither can I open up the window for a new post or access any support forums. I’ve cleared the cache and tried different browsers, but no luck. All I can do is log in. If I try to see any WordPress.com blog or access my Dashboard or hit “New Post”, the notification I get is that the server couldn’t be contacted and that I should check my connection. Which I would do if it wasn’t for the fact that I can open any and every other website”.

We tried to contact Tata Photon to get a clear idea, but it was unavailable for comment. We also contacted Tata Photon users, who run their websites and blogs on the Wordpress platform. They said they have been unable to access the service since Monday. Many users tweeted out their puzzlement and frustration after discovering that they were suddenly unable to view their own blogs and sites.

"Tata simply blocked 25 MILLION wordpress blogs @cis_india highlight this"

"Not able to open http://Wordpress.com blogs on Tata Photon Plus."

"all wordpress blogs blocked in Tata photon plus"

"It's some Tata Photon bug. Wordpress working fine with Reliance."

"There is a known issue with Tata Photon and Wordpress. Found 5 people who have the same."

In protest, some bloggers from across the country have formed a group called the Indian Bloggers' Forum. The forum plans to approach the Supreme Court with a PIL seeking immediate unblocking of their blogs and websites.

Earlier this week, a list containing 309 URLs sought to be banned by the government in light of the Assam violence and the subsequent exodus in northeast India was leaked online. The URLs comprising Twitter accounts, HTML img tags, blog posts, entire blogs, and a handful of websites, were blocked between August 18 and 21. In an analysis of the leaked information, Pranesh Prakash, Programme Manager at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) wrote, "It is clear that the list was not compiled with sufficient care". The list included Wordpress.com and Wordpress.org among other domains. However, only select entries - 3 from Wordpress.org and 8 from Wordpress.com- were meant to be blocked out.

The clampdown on websites with content deemed to be offensive and disruptive led to the Indian government ordering the blocking of around 310 web pages. The Centre began to come down heavily on the channels it believed were playing a role in triggering fear, and leading to violence and the mass displacement of Indians from the northeast. It has been reported that morphed images and videos were uploaded to these websites with the intention of inciting the Muslim community in the country.

If your access to Wordpress has been blocked, let us know in your comments.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/tech2-in-com-som-isps-block-wordpress-domain-across-india

Solutions for Enabling Cross-border Data Flows

praskrishna — 2012-12-07T22:42:35Z

ICC BASIS and the Internet Society are co-organising a workshop at the IGF (Baku - 7 November 2012 - 14:30 to 16:00) to explore solutions for enabling cross-border data flows. Malavika Jayaram is a panelist.

This was published by Internet Society. For details published on the IGF website, see here

BRIEF OVERVIEW

The Internet has revolutionised our ability to communicate and share data beyond national boundaries, thereby facilitating cross-border social and commercial interactions. Enabling cross-border data flows, however, raises a number of important Internet governance policy considerations for a broad range of stakeholders, such as business, intermediaries, users, law enforcement agencies, governments, policymakers and the wider Internet technical community. In this context, the workshop will explore policy issues, from various stakeholder perspectives.

The dynamic panel of experts will provide a wide range of perspectives for this discussion and explore concrete solutions and options for enabling cross-border data flows. This is an important opportunity to raise awareness about the practical and the policy realities raised by these issues. It will also be an opportunity to share concrete issues, experiences, possible approaches and solutions.

MODERATOR
Jeff Brueggeman, Vice President-Public Policy & Deputy Chief Privacy Officer, AT&T

PANELLISTS
Joseph Alhadeff, Chief Privacy Strategist, Vice President, Global Public Policy, Oracle
Maria Häll, Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications, Sweden
Malavika Jayaram, Partner, Jayaram & Jayaram, Bangalore
Christine Runnegar, Senior Policy Advisor, Internet Society
Ivan Sanchez Medina, Member of the Columbian National Telecommunications Commission, CRC

LEAD DISCUSSANTS
Olga Cavalli, Advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Argentina
Christoph Steck, Chief Regulatory Officer, Telefonica (TBC)
Kevin Bankston, Senior Counsel and Free Expression Director, Center for Democracy & Technology

REMOTE MODERATOR
Constance Weise, ICC BASIS

SUBSTANTIVE RAPPORTEUR
Karen Mulberry, Policy Advisor, Internet Society

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/solutions-for-cross-border-data-flows

Socio-financial Online Networks: Globalizing Micro-Credit through Micro-transactional Networked Platforms – A Public Lecture by Radhika Gajalla

praskrishna — 2011-06-24T11:37:52Z

The Centre for Internet and Society invites you to a public lecture by Prof. Radhika Gajalla of Bowling Green State University. She will give a lecture on how microfinance online functions through the social networked online space and the micro-transactional abilities of the interface together work to enhance financialization of the globe.

In her lecture, she will focus on how this is made possible by the increased digitalization of financial practices and the role micro practices play in producing globalization. She will also lay emphasis on the fact that the increased digitalization of finance also means that "financial literacy" is also removed into the virtual space so that it is further away from subaltern daily praxis while simultaneously staging subaltern presence in cosmopolitan space through mobilizing structures of 'feeling' that Dr. Shameem Black refers to as "sentimental sympathy".

Prof. Gajalla’s lecture will also touch upon issues like what online socially networked micro-credit websites do visually and through the use of multiple tools that are embedded in the discourse of interactivity is to make it seem as if the subaltern is indeed participating in these networks. Thus, the appearance of a subaltern presence is produced. In this production of appearance of the subaltern presence in online contexts, just as in other visual and static contexts, the complexity of socio-cultural and economic intersections are not clearly revealed or accounted for. This reproduces exotic notions of the authentic, mummified ‘other’ and offers the subaltern image up for consumption. In turn, as Web 2.0 tools are set up to actually reach the offline subaltern via non-profit or for profit representatives that connect to these online networks, the subaltern in turn is tapped as a consumer for capital.

Radhika Gajjala

Radhika Gajjala is a Professor of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University and Director of the American Culture Studies program. Her book, "Cyber Selves: Feminist Ethnographies of South Asian Women" was published in 2004. She has co-edited collections on "South Asian Technospaces", "Global Media Culture and Identity" and "Webbing Cyberfeminist Practice: Communities, Pedagogies, and Social Action". She is presently working on a forthcoming book, "Weavings of the Real and Virtual: Cyberculture and the Subaltern" to be published in 2012 and is also working on two interrelated projects — one on "Microfinance Online and Money in Virtual Worlds and Social Media" in relation to the ITization and NGOization of global socio-economic work and play environments and the other on "Coding and Placement of Affect and Labour in Digital Diasporas".

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/socio-financial-online-networks

Society 5.0 and Artificial Intelligence with a Human Face

Admin — 2019-05-14T14:51:56Z

On 10 May 2019 Radhika Radhakrishnan attended a stakeholder's roundtable consultation on "Society 5.0 and Artificial Intelligence with a Human Face", organized by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. The event aimed to chart a roadmap for India’s participation at the G20, under the Japanese Presidency.

The agenda can be found here. Radhika's inputs were primarily focused on the feminist and gender implications of publicly deployed AI models, challenges and opportunities for academic AI-focused research in the Global South, recommendations for AI capacity building and skilling in the Global South, and regulation of black-box AI.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/society-5-0-and-artificial-intelligence-with-a-human-face

Social Notworking - 'Murder by Twitter'

praskrishna — 2014-02-04T07:02:30Z

Suketu Mehta (@suketumehta) - terrible news about sunanda tharoor. this is murder by twitter.

The article by Malini Nair published in the Times of India quotes Nishant Shah.

Even before forensic science has declared the reasons behind Sunanda Pushkar's shocking death on Friday night, social media has been accused of murder. Writer Suketu Mehta wasn't the only one to point fingers. "First murder by @TwitterIndia , claps, fellow twitter matured guns!" is how another tweet went. Besides the deadly cocktail of depression, drugs, a strained marriage, questions have been raised about whether the vicious banter and collective howls of derision on social media over her very public meltdown — again on social media — pushed her over the edge.
Have we, the tweeple, in our eagerness to share every detail of our lives over an internet megaphone, not quite understood what the social media can do, especially its pitfalls? Is the line between the public and private blurring too fast? Commentators say that the rules that govern human and social behaviour haven't changed, and the fault lies in how we negotiate the cyber turf.

Can our digital lives have serious offline consequences? Nishant Shah, director, research , Centre for Internet & Society, Bangalore, says people need to realize that though twitter amplifies everything, but the ability to hurt, be mean, fight, question, critique and bully is not new.

"These are human practices , which replay themselves across different media forms. What is perhaps new is that our most personal and darkest desires have become available for public spectacle," says Shah.

That the twitterati can be brutal has been shown often enough this last year. When Tehelka editor Tarun Tejpal was mired in allegations of sexual harassment, his daughter was hounded on social media. Recently when novelist Lavanya Sankaran wrote an op-ed for New York Times defending the decent Indian man, she was royally derided, so much so that another journalist Rahul Bhatia tweeted in her defence, asking people to lay off.

Sunanda's story hurtled towards a tragedy in a space of 48 hours after she went public. As Shah points out it wasn't as though there were no affairs and scandals before the dawn of social media but the tangle would have spun out differently and less brutally in another time and age. It all began, as Pushkar admitted to some papers and later denied, with the spilling of alleged BBMs sent by Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar to Tharoor on his twitter account.

Predictably, the effect of the first round of revelations was explosive. In fact, Pushkar herself appeared taken aback by the fact that a twitter spat ended up making front page headlines.

The entire drama which, in another age, would have played out at home or a circle of family, friends and acquaintances — and at the most in far less dramatic gossip columns and on TV— was up on social media, provide enormous vicarious pleasure to thousands of social media bystanders. That Pushkar herself set the virtual assault in motion only adds to the bleak irony of it all. This was also not the first time Pushkar took a spat to twitter. @SPTVrocks tweeted about her fight with a journalist in Dubai earlier this month.

Clinical psychologist Varkha Chulani says it is the personality behind the media usage not the form itself that is to be blamed. "People choose to talk about their private lives to impress others, to get attention. We forget what is real and what is virtual." Shah, however, believes that we live in a world of digital striptease and that the ubiquitous and pervasive technologies that surround us have forever blurred the lines between real and virtual.

Activists have often pointed out that the social media has everything going for it — quick and vast connect and instant response — but what it lacks is empathy. It is easy enough to send out an RIP message, for instance, for someone you don't know or even care for, positioning yourself as a caring, empathetic soul in 140 characters.

Post Pushkar's death, news anchor Barkha Dutt tweeted that we need to limit viciousness , stop judging and use greater compassion on twitter.

Shah makes a similar plea for the human touch.

"We are all so self-involved , creating narratives of our selves, bit-stripping every moment , instagramming every event, tweeting every encounter, and liking all the various things that happen around us, that we don't always have enough time to stop, to respond, to think and reflect upon other people's conditions . We have become jaded, to the various 'great' moments in people's time lines, but we are also becoming jaded to the pain that our involvement in these social networks can bring to those who are the subject of our attention," he says.

With additional reporting by Shobita Dhar

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-times-of-india-january-19-2014-malini-nair-social-networking-murder-by-twitter

Social Network Suicide

praskrishna — 2011-04-01T15:54:43Z

Those disillusioned with their virtual friends circle are saying goodbye through web applications that wipe out your net identity. What’s more, you can even have your own memorial page, says Sahana Charan in this article published in the Bangalore Mirror on Sunday, February 6, 2011.

It is funny that even though some young people claim to have a thousand friends on social networking sites, they may actually never socialise with any of their virtual buddies. So when the “net” benefits don’t translate to reality, there is disillusionment. And then they may stop being active on networking sites. That’s the beauty and tragedy of virtual friendships.

And this is just one of the many reasons why your friend — who was otherwise tweeting her every mundane activity or would update her status message on Facebook every nano-second — might have suddenly become incommunicado.

As pressures to keep up virtual appearances become taxing and unpleasant experiences make social networking sites “not-so-safe” to share intimate details, many young people are opting out of these networks, deactivating their accounts and taking web sanyaas.

Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore says that in India this is a relatively new phenomenon and only a small group of people have actually committed web suicide using applications that wipe out your virtual identity. But a bigger number of netizens may be killing their networking accounts, because of a variety of resons — ranging from internet stalking to “no guaranteed benefits.”

“Many people may get onto a social networking site to use it for meeting rituals, to look for partners and to get information on jobs. When these are fulfilled they may decide to move out. Some people realise that a lot of their time and energy goes into updating accounts on Facebook, Twitter or Myspace, but it has not helped them get ‘real world’ benefits, so they just stop being active,” says Abraham.

Virtual disappearance

With the deactivation came some applications which help you go peacefully into a social network death — Web 2.0 Suicide Machine and Sepukkoo.com promise to remove your virtual identity completely so that you can make real friends. While Suicide Machine irreversibly removes all your friends, groups, photos and vidoes one by one and joins you to its “Social Network Suiciders,” Sepukkoo goes one step ahead and creates a memorial page for you.

What’s ironical is that you are actually going to another network and this one’s called ‘suicide networking’, where you encourage friends to leave their social circles. Both applications have been banned by Facebook but work on other sites.

So why would a popular guy deactivate his account ? Joe V J, a 28-year-old IT professional, who was regularly uploading pictures of his new bike or parties with friends on Facebook, took himself off the site recently. He realised that people who were not meant to see his profile and candid shots, had access and were posting comments.

“I got into the site because it was a great place to bond with friends. But then I realised that relatives and acquaintances who I had no clue about, were on the social network, had started pinging. They would look at pictures and express shock and then tell other people. It became a little too much, so I just decided to click the deactivate option,” he says.

Privacy concerns

It can get really ugly and those being harassed online may just disappear to save their privacy. Tinu Cherian, a techie and Wikipedia administrator speaks of an incident where another administrator was harassed by a cyber troll because he had blocked this guy from making wrong updates on Wiki’s pages.

“He had no option but to wipe out his Twitter account, which was hacked into and damning information was uploaded.”

Privacy concerns rise as Facebook decides to share account information with marketeers. “When Facebook first started, only 10 per cent of your information on the site could be seen by an outsider, but in 2011, 90 per cent of your information can be accessed by people other than your friends,” says Abraham.

There is another reason why people go off online networks. “When it first came, Facebook was considered the Ivy league and everyone wanted to be there. Youngsters suddenly thought Orkut was infradig and ceased to be on that site. So sometimes, people may just move out because they want to be somewhere else.” And that’s why the networking tamasha continues.

Read the article in the Bangalore Mirror

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/social-network-suicide

Social media, SMS are not why NE students left Bangalore

nishant — 2012-08-28T10:48:06Z

I woke up one morning to find that I was living in a city of crisis. Bangalore, where the largest public preoccupations to date have been about bad roads, stray dogs, and occasionally, the lack of night-life, the city was suddenly a space that people wanted to flee and occupy simultaneously.

Nishant Shah's article on North East exodus was published in FirstPost on August 20, 2012.

Through technology mediated gossip mill that produced rumours faster than the speed of a digital click, imagination of terror, of danger and of material harm found currency and we found thousands of people suddenly leaving the city to go back to their imagined homelands.

The media spectacle of this exodus around questions of religion, ethnicity and regionalism only emphasised the fact that there is a new wave of connectedness that we live in – the social web, or what have you – that can no longer be controlled, contained or corrected by official authorities and their voices.

Despite a barrage of messages from the law enforcement and security authorities, on email, on large screens on the roads, and on the comfort of our cell-phones, there was a growing anxiety and a spiralling information mill that was producing an imaginary situation of precariousness and bodily harm.

Much has been said about the eruption of this irrationality that pokes holes in the mantle of cosmopolitanism that Bangalore (and other such ‘global cities’) is enveloped in, in its quest to represent the India that is supposed to shine. It has been heartening to see how communities that were supposed to be in conflict have worked so hard in the last few days, at building human contacts and providing assurances of safety and inclusion, which are far more effective than the official word.

There has been a rich discourse on what this means for India’s modernity, especially when such an event marks the so-called neo-liberal cities, showing the darker undercurrents of discrimination and suspicion that seem to lie just beneath the surface of networked neighbourhoods.

While there is much to be unpacked about the political motivations and the ecologies of fear that our immigrant lives are enshrined in, I want to focus on two aspects of this phenomenon which need more attention.

The first is the fierce localisation of our global technologies. There is an imagination, especially in cities like Bangalore, of digital technologies as necessarily plugging us in larger networks of global information consumption. The idea that technology plugs us into the transnational circuits is so huge that it only tunes us towards an idea of connectedness that is always outward looking, expanding the scope of nation, community and body.

However, the ways in which information was circulating during this phenomenon reminds us that digital networks are also embedded in local practices of living and survival. Most of the times, these networks are so naturalised and such an integral part of our crucial mechanics of urban life that they appear as habits, without any presence or visibility, In times of crises – perceived or otherwise – these networks make themselves visible, to show that they are also inward looking.

The visibility of the networks, when they suddenly crop up for public viewing, for those of us who are outside of that network, it signals that something has gone wrong. There is a glitch in the matrix and we need to start unpacking the local, the specific and the particular that signals the separation of these networks from our habits of living.

The second point I want to make is about the need to look at the ellipsis that occurs in this spectacular emergence of the network and the apparatus that is set into place to control and regiment it. The hyper-visibility of the information and technology network destabilises the ways in which we think of our everyday, thus emerging not only as a sign of the crisis but a crisis unto itself.

These ellipses of the crisis – replacing the crisis with the network – as well as the collusion between the crisis and the network are the easy solution that state authorities pick up on.

This is a problem about the nation-wide building of mega-cities filled with immigrant bodies that are not allowed their differences because they all have to be cosmopolitan and mobile bodies. The solution, however, is offered at the level of technology.

Instead of addressing the larger issues of conservative parochialism, an increasing back-lash by conservative governments and a growing hostility that emerges from these cities which nobody possesses and nobody belongs to, the efforts are being made to blame technology as the site where the problem is located and the object that needs to be controlled.

So what we have is redundant regulation that controls the number of text messages we are able to send, or policing of internet for those spreading rumours. The entire focus has been on information management, as if the reason for mass exodus of people from the North East Indian states and the sense of fragility that the city has suddenly been immersed in, is all due to the pervasive and ubiquitous information gadgets and their ability to proliferate in peer-2-peer environments outside of the control of the government.

Digital Technologies have become the de facto scapegoats of many problems in our past. It invites more regulation, containment and censorship of the freedom that digital technologies allow you – from the infamous Delhi Public School MMS Scandal in the early 2000s to the recent attempts at filtering the social web – we have seen the repeated futility of such measures of technology control, and yet it appears as a constant trope in the State’s solution to the problems of the contemporary.

This obsession with governance of technology to resolve a much more nuanced problem is akin to fabulous stories of mad monarchs banishing spinning wheels from their kingdoms or sentencing hammers to imprisonment for the potential and possibility of crime.

And these solutions are always going to fail, because they fail to recognise either the intimate penetration of digital technologies in our everyday life, or the ways in which our local structures are constructed through the presence of ubiquitous technologies and gadgets and screens and networks.

These ellipses of the crisis – replacing the crisis with the network – as well as the collusion between the crisis and the network are the easy solution that state authorities pick up on.

Digital Technologies have become the de facto scapegoats of many problems in our past. It invites more regulation, containment and censorship of the freedom that digital technologies allow you – from the infamous Delhi Public School MMS Scandal in the early 2000s to the recent attempts at filtering the social web – we have seen the repeated futility of such measures of technology control, and yet it appears as a constant trope n the State’s solution to the problems of the contemporary.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/www-first-post-com-aug-25-2012-nishant-shah-social-media-sms-are-not-why-ne-students-left-bangalore

Social media undermining journalistic credibility?

praskrishna — 2013-03-06T04:41:15Z

The line separating journalists and bloggers is being increasingly blurred due to the growth of social media, said Nelson Moses, who was a panelist at a discussion on the credibility of social media as a journalistic tool.

The article was published in the New Indian Express on March 4, 2013. Snehashish Ghosh was a panelist.

The talk titled, “Is social media credible?” comprising a panel of professionals from various media houses from across India, was held as a part of the alumni reunion at the Indian Institute of Journalism and New Media (IIJNM) recently.

The panel included Snehashish Ghosh, a policy associate at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore, Nelson Moses, who has had stints with numerous media houses and now works at Yahoo, Subhash Rai, web editor of the Economic and Political Weekly, and Tresa Morera, the deputy editor of the global online desk at Reuters, Bangalore.

The discussion, moderated by Professor Mark Austin of IIJNM, revolved around the crucial issues surrounding the Indian media industry and the use of social media.

Talking points included the role social media like Twitter and Facebook played in populist movements across the Middle East, such as the Arab Spring and also the exodus of people of Manipuri and Assamese descent from Bangalore last year, due to a series of phone messages which purportedly threatened them with violence.Other issues covered in the discussion were whether bloggers could be cited as credible sources of information and also if their roles in shaping public perception was influencing how media houses and journalists function.

During the course of the discussion, which centered around the drawbacks of a digitally interlinked media landscape, Subhash Rai, said that though it was clearly the work of “right-wing fundamental elements” which led to the circulation of provocative messages against people from the north eastern part of the country, the incident also pointed to the failure of neoliberalism in the Indian context.

“Journalists are one of the beneficiaries of neoliberalism,” said Shubash Rai, while arguing that often, urban concerns take precedence over more

pressing issues occurring outside the big cities, leading to these issues either not being reported or not given the same importance. “For example, nobody is reporting the agrarian crisis,” he said.

Tresa Morera, an IIJNM alumna, said that she believed that “transparency” in the Indian media, and a series of “checks and balances” within media organizations could help in better reporting by the media.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/new-indian-express-march-4-2013-social-media-undermining-journalistic-credibility

Social media sites refuse Indian censorship request

praskrishna — 2011-12-08T08:26:45Z

The Indian government's proposal to crack down on offensive internet content has sparked anger among the population.

Telecommunications minister Kapil Sibal asked providers of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to screen out content that might be considered defamatory to religious and political leaders. But the move has been decried as a gag on freedom of speech.

Presenter: Kanaha Sabapathy
Speakers: Kapil Sibal, India's Telecommunications Minister; Milind Deora, Minister of State for Communications and IT; Varun Gandhi, Member of Parliament for the Opposition, BJP; Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of the policy research group, the Centre for Internet and Society

Listen to the audio here (Microsoft ASF video, 591 bytes)

Sunil Abraham spoke to Radio Australia. Follow the original broadcast by ABC Australia Radio here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/social-media-sites-refuse-indian-censorship