Centre for Internet and Society

Digital IDs

pranav — 2019-10-18T13:55:06Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/digital-identity

Comments: The Personal Data Protection Bill

pranav — 2019-11-15T09:35:33Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/comments-the-personal-data-protection-bill

Comments to The Personal Data Protection Bill

pranav — 2019-11-15T09:42:47Z

CIS has conducted extensive research into the areas privacy, data protection, data security, and was also a member of the Committee of Experts constituted under Justice A P Shah. CIS has also been cited multiple times in the Report of the Committee of Experts led by Justice Srikrishna. CIS values the fundamental principles of justice, equality, freedom and economic development. This submission is consistent with CIS’ commitment to these values, the safeguarding of general public interest and the protection of individuals’ right to privacy and data protection. Accordingly, the comments in this submission aim to further these principles. We welcome the opportunity provided to our comments on the Bill and we hope that the final Bill will consider the interests of all the stakeholders to ensure a Bill that protects the privacy of the individual while encouraging a free and fair economy.

You can read our full comments here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/comments-to-the-personal-data-protection-bill

‘Future of Work’ in India’s IT/IT-eS Sector pdf

pranav — 2020-04-28T09:52:19Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/2018future-of-work2019-in-india2019s-it-it-es-sector-pdf

Media Bazaar Jokhim

pranav — 2021-07-23T13:24:03Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/resources/media-bazaar-jokhim-rating.pdf

June and July Newsletter

pranav — 2021-08-10T15:57:16Z

The newsletter presents the work done in the months of June and July 2021.

Announcements

We are pleased to announce the launch of a seminar series to showcase research around digital rights and technology policy, with a focus on the Global South. The CIS seminar series will be a venue for researchers to share works-in-progress, exchange ideas, identify avenues for collaboration, and curate research. It will also seek to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 on research exchange, and foster collaborations among researchers and academics from diverse geographies. For more details on the first session, on Information Disorders, and to register, click here: [link]

We are also hiring for two full time remote positions:

Research Associate: Access to Knowledge Programme: Apply by August 13 [link]
Communication Designer: Apply by August 20 [link]

Cybersecurity, Privacy, and Emerging Technology

Following the MCA notification mandating disclosures of crypto currency holdings by companies, Aryan Gupta, in an issue brief, discusses the policy landscape in the United States of America, United Kingdom, and Japan with particular emphasis upon definition, accounting practices, and taxation, with respect to crypto currencies. [link]
We submitted comments in response to the Supreme Court E-committee’s draft vision document of phase III of the E-courts project. Aman Nair, Arinjay Vyas, Pallavi Bedi and Garima Saxena submitted their general comments and recommendations, and comparatively analysed the integration of digital technology into the judiciary in both South Asia and Africa. [link]
Google’s new Privacy Sandbox platform promises to preserve anonymity when serving tailored advertising. But does this new framework help users in any way? Maria Jawed’s analysis reveals that Google’s gambit to reorient the ad-tech ecosystem under the garb of privacy, ultimately ends up undermining it. [link]
Pandemic technology is taking a toll on data privacy, especially in the absence of any legal framework; these tools are being used for purposes beyond managing the pandemic. In an article published in the Deccan Herald, Aman Nair and Pallavi Bedi argue that India’s digital response to the pandemic has stoked concerns that surveillance could pose threats to the privacy of the personal data collected. [link]
In a piece for The Wire, Aman Nair analyses Tether, a lesser known crypto currency that is at the heart of a $3 trillion market. Issued by Tether Limited, Tether forms the foundation for modern day crypto trading and could potentially be one of the biggest schemes in financial history. [link]
India has 500 million internet users — over a third of its total population — making it the country with the second largest number of internet users after China. With this comes several kinds of digital threats that an average digital consumer in India must regularly contend with. Pranav M.B. attempts to identify the existing state of digital safety in India, with a report that maps digital threats in the country. [link]
Since last year, there have been regular questions around the anti-competitive practices of digital platforms. After 46 US states filed an antitrust case against Facebook along with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in December 2020, Kamesh Shekar analyzed these developments in a blog post. [link]
Recently, the Indian government mandated online messaging providers to enable identification of originators of messages on their platforms. In an academic paper for the NUJS Law Review, Gurshabad Grover, Tanaya Rajwade and Divyank Katira conduct a legal and constitutional analysis of this ‘traceability’ requirement, how it can be implemented, and how these methods come with serious costs to usability, security, and privacy. [link]
The National Digital Health Mission: Health Data Management Policy seeks to establish a digital health ecosystem by creating a unique health identity (UHID) for every Indian citizen. Pallavi Bedi points out that hasty implementation of the policy without adequate safeguards not only risks the privacy and security of medical data, but also undermines trust in the system leading to low uptake. [link]
In our comments to the proposed amendments to the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020, our analysis focuses on eight points: Definitions and Registration, Compliance, Data Protection and Surveillance, Flash Sales, Unfair Trade Practices, Jurisdictional Issues with Competition Law, Compliance with International Trade Law and Liabilities of Marketplace E-commerce Entities. [link]

Freedom of Expression, Intermediary Liability and Information Disorders

The recent “Infodemic” clearly shows that disinformation costs people’s lives. CIS, and the Global Disinformation Index have published a report that examines the risk of disinformation on digital news platforms in India, creating an index that is intended to serve donors and stakeholders with a neutral assessment of news sites that they can utilise to defund disinformation. [link]
Torsha Sarkar, Gurshabad Grover, Raghav Ahooja, Pallavi Bedi and Divyank Katira examine the legality and constitutionality of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, highlighting potential benefits and harms that may arise from the rules, and making recommendations to retain the rules within constitutional bounds, and retain consistency with human rights based approaches to content regulation. [link]
The passage of the Intermediary Liability Rules, 2021, has also formalized the legal requirement for the utilization of automated tools in content moderation. In a blog-post for the KU Leuven’s Centre for IT and IP (CITIP) Blog, Shweta Mohandas and Torsha Sarkar analyze the requirement in light of concerns of freedom of expression of Internet users. [link]
Our comments to the Cinematograph (Amendment) Bill, 2021, authored by Tanvi Apte, Anubha Sinha, and Torsha Sarkar, examine the constitutionality and legality of the Bill and whether the proposed amendments are compatible with established constitutional principles, precedents, previous policy positions and existing law. [link]
Tanvi Apte and Torsha Sarkar, in a submission to the Facebook Oversight Board in Case 2021-008-FB-FBR: Brazil, Health Misinformation and Lockdowns, answer questions set out by the Board which concerned a post made by a Brazilian sub-national health official, and raised questions on health misinformation and enforcement of Facebook's community standards. [link]
In an essay for the Indian Journal of Law and Technology (IJLT), Torsha Sarkar analyzes issues rising out of the recent litigation between Trump and Twitter. Torsha examines intermediary liability issues under American law, and draws parallel for India, in light of the ongoing litigation around the suspension of advocate Sanjay Hegde’s Twitter account. [link]

Copyright & Access to Knowledge

The Indian Parliamentary Standing Committee on Commerce’s report weighs on several aspects of the Indian IPR system and issues of protection and enforcement. In a blog post, Anubha Sinha summarily notes the observations and recommendations of the Committee on the Copyright Act, 1957 which stand to impact access to knowledge. [link]
The 41st edition of the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) organized by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was held from 28 June to 1 July. Anubha Sinha participated in the event as a speaker and delivered statements on the Protection of Broadcasting Organisations [link], and on Limitations and Exceptions [link]. Readers can access the notes from Day 1 [link], Day 2 [link], and Days 3 & 4 [link].
The CIS Access to Knowledge team published a comparative analysis of two prominent Wikimedia initiatives, Wikipedia Asian Month and Project Tiger, to understand prevailing challenges and opportunities, and strategies to address the same. Nitesh Gill in a two-part report outlines the research questions and methods of this study [link], and then presents some of the observations and learnings [link].

Labour and Social Justice

In a flagship report on domestic and care workers on digital platforms, Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon argue that digital platforms are complicit in discriminating against workers on the basis of their identities, and that domestic workers continue to remain in precarious positions without any legal recognition or support. This work was jointly authored between the Centre for Internet and Society and the Domestic Workers’ Rights Union. [link]
The ongoing pandemic has raised very valid questions of access and infrastructure in India, especially during a time when the Internet and digital technologies are essential, and in many ways the ‘new normal’. P.P. Sneha and Anasuya Sengupta write in Seminar Magazine, outlining some key challenges in digitalisation and representation of non-dominant/marginalised languages on the Internet, through reflections on two recent projects related to languages and the Internet. [link]
With the onset of the national lockdown on 24th March 2020 in response to the outbreak of COVID-19, the fate of millions of migrant workers was left uncertain. In addition, lack of enumeration and registration of migrant workers became a major obstacle for all state governments and the Central Government to channelize relief and welfare measures. Ankan Barman compiled a report to qualitatively assess health conditions of migrant workers and access to welfare during the first COVID-19 lockdown, in three host-states, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Haryana. [link]
Between July to November 2019, Indian Federation of App-based Transport Workers (IFAT) and International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) conducted 2,128 surveys across six major cities: Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi NCR, Hyderabad, Jaipur, and Lucknow, to determine the occupational health and safety of app-based transport workers. Findings from the survey have been compiled as a report which reveals the complete absence of social security and protection of workers in a digital platform economy. [link]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/june-july-2021-newsletter

Fundamental Right to Privacy — Four Years of the Puttaswamy Judgment

pranav — 2021-08-24T04:55:05Z

Background

On 24 August 2017, in a nine-judge bench decision, the Indian Supreme Court located a fundamental right to privacy within the Indian Constitutional jurisprudence. Previously, the right to privacy has had a dubious existence in India’s judicial history, and it has been suggested that privacy is inherently a Western concept. However, essays by Ashna Ashesh, Vidushi Marda, and Bhairav Acharya — cited in the Puttaswamy judgment — dispelled this notion, by attempting to locate the constructs of privacy in Classical Hindu [link], and Islamic Laws [link]; and Acharya’s article in the Economic and Political Weekly, which highlighted the need for privacy jurisprudence to reflect theoretical clarity, and be sensitive to unique Indian contexts [link].

Through the six opinions in the Puttaswamy judgment, the Supreme Court discussed various aspects of the right to privacy, reading into it the constitutional values of dignity and liberty. In Amber Sinha’s three-part essay, he dissected these components of the right, discussing the sources, structure and scope of the right in detail. [link] Further, a visual guide prepared by Amber Sinha, and Pooja Saxena provides a rich story of privacy in independent India, as well as a visualisation of the various types of privacy the court located within the broader constitutional right. [link]

Privacy, Public Places and Surveillance

“Privacy attaches to the person and not to the place where it is associated.” - Justice Chandrachud, Puttaswamy

The right to privacy initially focused on protecting “private” spaces. These included spaces such as the home, from state interference. This drew from the belief that “a person’s home is their castle”. However, this idea of privacy is not limited simply to a person’s home. Privacy rests in ‘person’ and not in ‘places’. Therefore, even outside one’s home, other spaces could also acquire the character of private spaces, and even public spaces can afford a degree of privacy.

In a paper for the Centre for Development Informatics, Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon discussed the wholesale implementation of CCTVs in New Delhi. They deconstructed the narrative that equates greater surveillance with greater safety, more so in the case of women’s safety. Borrowing from feminist approaches to surveillance and privacy, they focussed on lived experiencess of surveillance with a focus on women living in informal settlements in New Delhi to argue that the ‘gaze of CCTV’ is intersectionally mediated and cast upon those already marginalized. [link]

Similarly, in a three part blog series for AI Policy Exchange, Arindrajit Basu and Siddharth Sonkar explain Automated Facial Recognition Systems (AFRS) while defining key privacy related legal and policy questions underpinning the adoption of AFRS. They go on to answer these questions by interrogating the existing data privacy laws in light of the mosaic theory of privacy, noting the dangers of ‘data-veillance’ and the need to recognize necessary safeguards. [link]

Biometrics

“The integrity of the body and the sanctity of the mind can exist on the foundation that each individual possesses an inalienable ability and right to preserve a private space in which the human personality can develop.” - Justice Chandrachud, Puttaswamy

Biometrics was central to the Puttaswamy judgment, as it was the collection of biometric data by the government to build the Aadhaar system that triggered this case, and the urgent need to commit the State to guarding residents’ fundamental right to privacy.

Following the Puttaswamy judgement, the Supreme Court tested the Aadhaar program against the proportionality principle it had previously established, which required every privacy-infringing measure introduced by the State to be justified by the tests of legitimate state aim, suitability, necessity, and proportional result. Shruti Trikanad explores how the test was interpreted, in comparison to similar applications for biometric identity systems in Kenya, Jamaica, and Mauritius. [link]

Using the principles established by the Puttaswamy judgment, Vrinda Bhandari, Shruti Trikand, and Amber Sinha created a framework to evaluate the governance and legitimacy of biometric digital identity systems. Through three kinds of checks — Rule of Law tests, Rights based tests, and Risks based tests — this scheme is a ready guide for evaluation of Digital ID. [link]

Privacy of information

“Informational privacy is a facet of the right to privacy.” - Justice Chandrachud, Puttaswamy

In the age of Big Data, the collection and analysis of personal data has tremendous economic value. However, these economic interests should not be pursued at the expense of personal privacy. Similarly, modern technology provides excessive opportunities for governments to monitor and survey the lives of citizens. Informed consent and meaningful choice while sharing information is central to the idea of informational privacy.

Based on publicly available submissions, press statements, and other media reports, Arindrajit Basu and Amber Sinha track the political evolution of the data protection ecosystem in India, in EPW Engage. They discuss how this has, and will continue to impact legislative and policy developments. [link]

The Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill forms an important part of the conversation about India’s informational privacy regime, and once notified, will have significant impact on the way data protection is regulated. Explore the Bill, through a privacy-by-design lens, with focus on its notice and consent communication, its visual interface design and interaction with users, and the role and accountability of design in its interpretation. This was created by Saumyaa Naidu, Akash Sheshadri, Shweta Mohandas, and Pranav MB. [link]

Further, in anticipation of the PDP Bill, Shweta Reddy wrote about the minimum compliance measures that Indian organizations should take, to reduce probability of a crisis during the implementation phase, as was seen in the case of European organizations and the GDPR. [link]

Pandemic and privacy

Given the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the eager techno-solutionism displayed by the government in adopting invasive and potentially unconstitutional technologies during these times, the principles elucidated in Puttaswamy are now more important than ever in upholding our rights. As Lord Atkin had stated in his famous dissent in the case of Liversidge v Anderson: “amid the clash of arms, the laws are not silent,” it is important to ensure that any potential solutions to the problems created by the pandemic are circumscribed by the constitution.

In an essay for the Economic & Political Weekly (EPW), Amber Sinha, Pallavi Bedi and Aman Nair interrogate the techno-solutionist response underpinning the shifts towards the digital in the governance agenda of the Indian State in the last two decades. They focus on the government's vaccination efforts during the pandemic to ground their arguments highlighting the issues of accessibility and privacy. [link]

Writing for the Deccan Herald, Aman Nair and Pallavi Bedi note how pandemic technology infringes upon data privacy, resulting in surveillance and exclusion. They suggest that the trade-off between privacy and pandemic technologies is unjustified given India’s digital divide that makes digital-driven approaches inefficient. [link]

The practical implications of such techno-solutionism can be troubling. In this blog-post, for instance, Pallavi Bedi writes about the privacy concerns haunting the Co-Win platform noting the lack of privacy policies governing the app, lack of clarity vis-a-vis data sharing between different apps such as Co-Win and Aarogya Setu and how it would violate user consent if it is used to develop digital health IDS. [link] In another blog post, Divyank Katira compares the benefits of Digital Vaccine Certificates with regular paper-based ones while focussing on the privacy implications of their use with recommendations on how to make the technology more privacy-respecting. [link]

Moving beyond the concerns raised by the adoption of digital measures by the government, Vipul Kharbanda examines other measures, such as releasing the names of COVID positive patients, putting up notices/posters or barricades around the houses of patients. He analyzes these measures against the existing privacy jurisprudence, including that laid down by the Puttaswamy judgment [link], [link].

Finally, during this pandemic, governments across the world have employed aggressive technological measures to trace individuals and enforce quarantine, costing individuals their privacy in exchange for potential benefit to the collective public health. Mira Swaminathan and Shubhika Saluja document the lateral surveillance this had encouraged, with people keeping a close watch on their neighbours’ behaviours. [link]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/fundamental-right-to-privacy-2014-four-years-of-the-puttaswamy-judgment

CIS auditors report and financials YE 31.3.2020 pdf

pranav — 2021-08-27T07:29:47Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/reports/cis-auditors-report-and-financials-ye-31-3-2020-pdf

Who Funds Us

pranav — 2021-11-02T09:43:53Z

CIS is able to conduct its research only through the support of both long term, and short term donors, who are also acknowledged throughout our website on the publications they support. Below is a list of past donors across the years who have supported us.

2019 - 2020

Article-19
Association for Progressive Communications
Azim Premji University
Big Data for Development (BD4D) Network
City, University Of London
CMS Technologies
East West Management Institute
Facebook India
Google India
LIRNEasia
Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Mozilla Foundation
Omidyar Network, India
Partnership on AI
Privacy International
The Asia Foundation
The International Center for Not-for-Profit Law
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
University of Oxford
Wikimedia Foundation

2018 - 2019

Arghyam
Article-19
Azim Premji University
CE Infosystems
Facebook India
Google India
Grabtax Holdings
Indira Gandhi Centre for Arts
Internet Society
LIRNEAsia
Mapbox
Mapillary AB
Mozilla Foundation
Opencage Data
Partnership on AI
Privacy International
The Hague Center for Strategic Studies
Wikimedia Foundation

2017 - 2018

Derechos Digitales
Facebook India
International Development Research Centre
LIRNEasia
Privacy International
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Tides Foundation
University of Manchester
Wikimedia Foundation

2016 - 2017

Derechos Digitales
International Development Research Centre
LIRNEasia
Mozilla Foundation
Privacy International
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
University of Oxford
Wikimedia Foundation

2015 -2016

International Development Research Centre
Kusuma Trust
Open Society Foundations
Privacy International
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation

2014 - 2015

Hans Foundation
Kusuma Trust
Open Society Foundations
Privacy International
Wikimedia Foundation

2013 - 2014

Ford Foundation
International Development Research Centre
Kusuma Trust
Privacy International
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation

2012 - 2013

Brown University
Centre for the Study of Culture and Society
Consumers International
Hans Foundation
Hivos
Kusuma Foundation
Privacy International
Richard Heeks
Wikimedia Foundation

2011 - 2012

Centre for the Study of Culture and Society
Ford Foundation
Hivos
IDS
Kusuma Foundation
Panos South Asia
Privacy International
UNESCO

2010 - 2011

Centre for the Study of Culture and Society
Demos
Hivos
International Telecommunication Union
Lexum
National Internet Exchange of India
Open Data Project
Open Video Alliance Project
UNESCO

2009 - 2010

Hivos
iCommons
Kusuma Trust
Lexum
National Institute of the Visually Handicapped
National Internet Exchange of India
Rohini Nilekani

2008 - 2009

Kusuma Trust

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/who-funds-us

irctemplate

pranav — 2021-10-12T10:56:57Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/irctemplate

Algorithmic Transparency PDF

pranav — 2020-07-09T05:20:27Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/algorithmic-transparency-pdf

CISFinancials_2018-19 PDF

pranav — 2020-07-15T09:56:33Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/cisfinancials_2018-19-pdf

Privacy_Covid19_Event_Poster

pranav — 2020-07-15T10:07:06Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/privacy_covid19_event_poster

Artificial Intelligence: A Full-Spectrum Regulatory Challenge (Working Draft) PDF

pranav — 2020-08-04T06:07:47Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/artificial-intelligence-a-full-spectrum-regulatory-challenge-working-draft-pdf

Fundamental Right to Privacy — Three Years of the Puttaswamy Judgment

pranav — 2020-08-24T07:46:10Z

Today marks three years since the Supreme Court of India recognised the fundamental right to privacy, but the ideals laid down in the Puttaswamy Judgment are far from being completely realized. Through our research, we invite you to better understand the judgment and its implications, and take stock of recent issues pertaining to privacy.

Amber Sinha dissects the Puttaswamy Judgment through an analysis of the sources, scope and structure of the right, and its possible limitations. [link]

Through a visual guide to the fundamental right to privacy, Amber Sinha and Pooja Saxena trace how courts in India have viewed the right to privacy since Independence, explain how key legal questions were resolved in the Puttaswamy Judgement, and provide an account of the four dimensions of privacy — space, body, information and choice — recognized by the Supreme Court. [link]

Based on publicly available submissions, press statements, and other media reports, Arindrajit Basu and Amber Sinha track the political evolution of the data protection ecosystem in India, on EPW Engage. They discuss how this has, and will continue to impact legislative and policy developments. [link]

For the AI Policy Exchange, Arindrajit Basu and Siddharth Sonkar examine the Automated Facial Recognition Systems (AFRS), and define the key legal and policy questions related to privacy concerns around the adoption of AFRS by governments around the world. [link]

Over the past decade, reproductive health programmes in India have been digitising extensive data about pregnant women. In partnership with Privacy International, we studied the Mother and Child Tracking system (MCTS), and Ambika Tandon presents the impact on the privacy of mothers and children in the country. [link]

While the right to privacy can be used to protect oneself from state surveillance, Mira Swaminathan and Shubhika Saluja write about the equally crucial problem of lateral surveillance — surveillance that happens between individuals, and within neighbourhoods, and communities — with a focus on this issue during the COVID-19 crisis. [link]

Finally, take a dive into the archives of the Centre for Internet and Society to read our work, which was cited in the Puttaswamy judgment — essays by Ashna Ashesh, Vidushi Marda and Bhairav Acharya that displaced the notion that privacy is inherently a Western concept, by attempting to locate the constructs of privacy in Classical Hindu [link], and Islamic Laws [link]; and Acharya’s article in the Economic and Political Weekly, which highlighted the need for privacy jurisprudence to reflect theoretical clarity, and be sensitive to unique Indian contexts [link].

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/fundamental-right-to-privacy-three-years-of-the-puttaswamy-judgment