Centre for Internet & Society

The Geopolitics of Cyberspace: A Compendium of CIS Research

by Arindrajit Basu

Cyberspace is undoubtedly shaping and disrupting commerce, defence and human relationships all over the world. Opportunities such as improved access to knowledge, connectivity, and innovative business models have been equally met with nefarious risks including cyber-attacks, disinformation campaigns, government driven digital repression, and rabid profit-making by ‘Big Tech.’ Governments have scrambled to create and update global rules that can regulate the fair and equitable uses of technology while preserving their own strategic interests.

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A Guide to Drafting Privacy Policy under the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019

by Shweta Reddy

The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019, (PDP Bill) which is currently being deliberated by the Joint Parliamentary Committee, is likely to be tabled in the Parliament during the winter session of 2021.

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Facial Recognition Technology in India

by Elonnai Hickok, Pallavi Bedi, Aman Nair and Amber Sinha

The Human Rights, Big Data and Technology Project, University of Essex, UK and the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) have jointly published a research paper on facial recognition technology. Authors, Elonnai Hickok, Pallavi Bedi, Aman Nair and Amber Sinha, examine technological tools such as CCTV and FRT which are increasingly being deployed by the government.

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Techno-solutionist Responses to COVID-19

by Amber Sinha, Pallavi Bedi and Aman Nair

The Indian state has increasingly adopted a digital approach to service delivery over the past decade, with vaccination being the latest area to be subsumed by this strategy. In the context of the need for universal vaccination, the limitations of the government’s vaccination platform Co-WIN need to be analysed.

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Finding Needles in Haystacks - Discussing the Role of Automated Filtering in the New Indian Intermediary Liability Rules 

by Shweta Mohandas and Torsha Sarkar

On the 25th of February this year The Government of India notified the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021. The new Rules broaden the scope of which entities can be considered as intermediaries to now include curated-content platforms (Netflix) as well as digital news publications. This blogpost analyzes the rule on automated filtering, in the context of the growing use of automated content moderation.

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Do We Really Need an App for That? Examining the Utility and Privacy Implications of India’s Digital Vaccine Certificates

by Divyank Katira

We examine the purported benefits of digital vaccine certificates over regular paper-based ones and analyse the privacy implications of their use.

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CIS Seminar Series: Information Disorder

by Aman Nair

The Centre for Internet and Society is announcing the launch of a seminar series to showcase research around digital rights and technology policy, with a focus on the Global South.

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Health IDs: Voluntary or Mandatory?

by Pallavi Bedi

On August 15, 2020, the prime minister launched the National Digital Health Mission (NDHM) with the objective of improving and streamlining the Indian healthcare system. In December 2020, the Central Government, notified the National Digital Health Mission: Health Data Management Policy (Health Data Policy) seeking to create a digital health ecosystem under the NDHM. A core pillar of the Health Data Policy is to create a unique health identity (UHID) for every Indian citizen.

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Media Market Risk Ratings: India

by Torsha Sarkar, Pranav M Bidare, and Gurshabad Grover

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and the Global Disinformation Index (GDI) are launching a study into the risk of disinformation on digital news platforms in India, creating an index that is intended to serve donors and brands with a neutral assessment of news sites that they can utilise to defund disinformation.

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