News & Media
Aadhaar: A widening net
As India makes Aadhaar compulsory for a range of services, concerns about potential data breaches remain more than six years after the govt started building the world’s largest biometric identification system.
Sunil Abraham: Honorary steward September 2017
Shuttleworth Foundation has announced Sunil Abraham as Honorary Steward for its September 2017 fellowship round.
11th Meeting of Information Systems Security Sectional Committee (LITD 17)
Udbhav Tiwari represented CIS at this meeting organized by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) at Manak Bhavan, New Delhi on April 13, 2017.
An Open Digital Global South: Risks and Rewards
Pranesh Prakash will be speaking at a conference to be organized by UC Davis Law School on May 25 and 26, 2017, in California, USA.
Opposition questions govt move to make Aadhaar must
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh claimed that the Aadhaar system was becoming an instrument of social exclusion rather than one of identity.
Identities Research
Caribou Digital organized an identity research event in Bengaluru at TERI on April 6, 2017. A total of 16 participants attended the event. Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash represented CIS at the event.
Privacy, what? Bengaluru police leaks 46,000 phone numbers on Twitter
Bengaluru police made the biggest goof up of all time by releasing private information of people who called 100 to complain since April 2015 and was seemingly unapologetic about the breach of privacy.
India’s National ID Program May Be Turning The Country Into A Surveillance State
For seven years, India’s government has been scanning the irises and fingerprints of its citizens into a massive database. The once voluntary program was intended to fix the country’s corrupt welfare schemes, but critics worry about its Orwellian overtones.
NGOs, individuals urge state CMs to curb Internet shutdown
Amid rising instances of Internet curbs, a group of individuals and organisations have urged the chief ministers of 12 states to only restrict specific online content rather than resort to complete shutdown.
Bengaluru cops' twitter handle in ethical storm
The city's privacy activists are among the most strident in trying to prevent the Union government from gaining unprecedented access to citizens' personal information through Aadhaar. But in their own backyard, Bengaluru police have been publishing on Twitter the phone numbers of thousands of citizens reporting various crimes such as gambling on the streets, random quarrels and harassment of women.
Get an Aadhaar card if you don't have one
The Aadhaar number has been made compulsory for filing tax return. With both the government and private parties insisting on it for various activities despite the Supreme Court's assertion that is not mandatory, you need to get one at the earliest.
The Aadhaar of all things
From a severely critical stand against Aadhaar in 2014, the Modi-led BJP in power has made a sharp U-turn to bulldoze its way into having every Indian scanned, tagged and labelled. A timeline of the country’s chequered date with the unique identification project.
WISER Lecture : Sumandro Chattapadhyay on Deregulation by Code
University of the Witwatersrand organized a talk by Sumandro Chattapadhyay on Derugulation by Code on March 8, 2017 in Johannesburg.
Internet Freedom Festival 2017
The Global Unconference of the Internet Freedom Communities took place at Valencia in Spain from March 6 to 10, 2017. The event was organized by the IFF. Vidushi Marda on behalf of CIS took part in the event.
Google Hangout on Technology and Jobs
Vanya Rakesh was a speaker at a Google hangout discussion held on Friday, March 24th, 2017 on "Technology and Jobs" as part of a project that ICRIER is doing with World Bank headquarters and several institutions across the world, titled “Jobs for Development”.
Conference on Safety Against Online Child Sexual Abuse
Japreet Grewal was a speaker at a conference on safety against online child sexual abuse which was jointly organized by CID, Telangana and the Department for Women Development and Child Welfare, Telangana on March 16 and 17, 2017 in Hyderabad.
From Virtual to Reliable: Exploring Freedom and Facts in the World of WWW (World Wide Web)
An interactive seminar on internet freedom was organized by the Embassy of the Kingdom of Netherlands and Adaan Foundation on March 21, 2017 at the India International Centre in New Delhi. Saikat Dutta and Amber Sinha were panelists.
क्या आधार पर जल्दबाज़ी में है सरकार?
Amber Sinha took part in a discussion on Aadhaar aired by NDTV on March 27, 2017.
The Fintech Disruption - Innovation, Regulation, and Transformation
Sumandro Chattapadhyay attended an event organized by Carnegie India on March 28, 2017. The aim of the initiative was that inclusive and sustainable regulations require constant interaction between policy makers and industry.
Debate on Cyber Crime in TV9
Vidushi Marda took part in a debate on cyber crime which was aired on TV9 on January 13, 2017.