Centre for Internet & Society

How Workstream 2 Plans to Improve ICANN's Transparency

by Asvatha Babu

The Centre for Internet and Society has worked extensively on ICANN’s transparency policies. We are perhaps the single largest users of the Documentary Information Disclosure Policy. Our goal in doing so is not to be a thorn in ICANN’s side, but to try and ensure that ICANN, the organisation, as well as the ICANN community have access to the data required to carry out the task of regulating the global domain name system.

Read more →

Internet's Core Resources are a Global Public Good - They Cannot Remain Subject to One Country's Jurisdiction

by Vidushi Marda

This statement was issued by 8 India civil society organizations, supported by 2 key global networks, involved with internet governance issues, to the meeting of ICANN in Hyderabad, India from 3 to 9 November 2016. The Centre for Internet & Society was one of the 8 organizations that drafted this statement.

Read more →

Request for Specifics: Rebuttal to UIDAI

by Hans Varghese Mathews

Responding to the Unique Identification Authority of India’s article that found “serious mathematical errors” in “Flaws in the UIDAI Process” (EPW 12 March 2016), the main mathematical argument used to arrive at the number of duplicates in the biometric database is explained.

Read more →

How Long Have Banks Known About The Debit Card Fraud?

by tiwari

The recent security breach in an Indian payment switch provider, confirmed earlier this week by the National Payments Corporation of India Ltd (NPCIL), has forced domestic banks into damage control mode over the past few days.

Read more →

RBI Directions on Account Aggregators

by Vipul Kharbanda and Elonnai Hickok

The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) Directions for account aggregator services in India seem to lay great emphasis on data security by allowing only direct access between institutions and do away with data scraping techniques.

Read more →

MLATs and the proposed Amendments to the US Electronic Communications Privacy Act

by Vipul Kharbanda and Elonnai Hickok

In continuance of our blog post on mutual legal assistance treaties (MLATs), we examine a new approach to international bilateral cooperation being suggested in the United States, by creating a mechanism for certain foreign governments to directly approach the data controllers.

Read more →

IANA Transition: A Case of the Emperor’s New Clothes?

by Vidushi Marda

Transparency is key to engaging meaningfully with ICANN. CIS has filed the most number of Documentary Information Disclosure Policy (DIDP) requests with ICANN, covering a range of subjects including its relationships with contracted parties, financial disclosure, revenue statements, and harassment policies. Asvatha Babu, an intern at CIS, analysed all responses to our requests and found that only 14% of our requests were answered fully.

Read more →

Internet Democratisation: IANA Transition Leaves Much to be Desired

by Vidushi Marda

At best, the IANA transition is symbolic of Washington’s oversight over ICANN coming to an end. It is also symbolic of the empowerment of the global multistakeholder community. In reality, it fails to do either meaningfully.

Read more →

Services like TwitterSeva aren’t the silver bullets they are made out to be

by Sunil Abraham

TwitterSeva is great, but it should not be considered a sufficient replacement for proper e-governance systems. This is because there are several serious shortcomings with the TwitterSeva approach, and it is no wonder that enthusiastic police officers and bureaucrats are somewhat upset with the slow deployment of e-governance applications. They are also right in being frustrated with the lack of usability and scalability of existing applications that hold out the promise of adopting private sector platforms to serve citizens better.

Read more →