Centre for Internet and Society

Indian police set up lab to monitor social media

praskrishna — 2013-03-19T09:23:12Z

Mumbai police have set up India's first "social media lab" to monitor Facebook, Twitter and other networking sites, sparking concerns about freedom of speech online.

This was published by AFP on March 18, 2013. This was also carried in Global Post on the same day. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

A specially-trained team of 20 police officers will staff the lab, which was launched over the week end and will work around the clock to keep an eye on issues being publicly discussed and track matters relating to public order.

"They will work under Special Branch. They will monitor and find out which topics are trending among the youth so we can plan law and order in a good way," police spokesman Satyanarayan Choudhary told AFP on Monday.

In November police sparked outrage and fierce debate about India's Internet laws by arresting two young women over a Facebook post criticising the shutdown of Mumbai after the death of a local hardline politician.

The pair were arrested under laws including section 66a of the Information Technology Act, which forbids "sending false and offensive messages through communication services" and can lead to three years in jail.

The case followed several arrests across the country for political cartoons or comments made online.

Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society research group, said the "natural reaction" was to worry about the new police lab given the way the law has been used.

"Police in the last four years have acted in an arbitrary and random fashion, often using the IT Act to settle political scores," he told AFP.

"When there's no crisis for the police, proactively keeping an eye on what people are saying or doing is overkill," he said.

Choudhary said the lab was not set to censor comments, echoing a statement made by police commissioner Satyapal Singh at the launch.

"By reading the mindset of what people are writing on various modes of communication, we will try to provide better and improved safety and security to the Mumbai citizens," Singh said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/afp-march-18-2013-indian-police-set-up-lab-to-monitor-social-media

The net is taking over

praskrishna — 2014-02-04T05:57:16Z

For many days to come, people will speculate what caused Sunanda Pushkar's death last week in a New Delhi hotel. Did Union minister Shashi Tharoor's wife die of poisoning or a drug overdose? Wasn't she unwell? Was it suicide? Or was it murder? No less a matter of speculation has been the social media's role in the whole affair.

The article by Veenu Sandhu and Surabhi Agarwal published in the Business Standard on January 24, 2014 quotes Sunil Abraham.

Writer Suketu Mehta has called it "murder by Twitter". Pushkar's very public spat with Mehr Tarar, a Pakistani journalist, on the micro-blogging site, many psychologists feel, may have multiplied her anguish. Apart from other things, Tarar had tweeted: "The blonde's aqal is weaker thn (sic) her grammar & spellings." Still others believe Pushkar had the premonition that end was near, and it was there for all to see on social media. "Hasta hua jayega," (will go laughing), she had tweeted a few days before her death.

Social media is no longer time-pass in the country, certainly not with over 90 million users. The line that divides online and offline lives has blurred. Networking sites have begun to impact human behaviour. Lives are being lived in the open: open to comment, analysis and abuse. Mahesh Murthy, the founder of digital brand management firm Pinstorm, calls it the "demise of the culture of secrecy". This is the age, he says, "of diversity, of coming out in the open with sexual preferences et cetera. Social media will help slaughter sacred cows. It is a good thing to happen, except for the sacred cows." According to Murthy, the pitfalls of uncensored speech are for those "who think they can control their lives or are insecure".

But pitfalls are showing up. Some time ago, a high-profile couple from Delhi approached marriage and family counsellor Nisha Khanna. Their problem was aggravated by the wife's obsession with Facebook, to the extent that she would put out everything, including the ups and downs of her relationship with her husband, as status messages for the consumption of her social media friends and acquaintances. The husband was livid - he felt exposed. It took six months of rigorous counselling before the wife started controlling, though marginally, her social media behaviour. "We are seeing obsession, irrationality and an inability to spot the very thick line that divides the private from the public," says Varkha Chulani, clinical psychologist, psychotherapist and consultant with Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai. People, she adds, are looking for Facebook 'like' buttons even in real life.

Feelings of extreme happiness, depression, loneliness and even suicidal thoughts are being shared not with family and friends but with Facebook 'connections' and Twitter 'followers'. Tweets or status updates that point to suicidal tendencies, in particular, can be telling. Some of these key expressions are "depressed", "feeling abused", "it's over" or "empty inside". A study - Tracking Suicide Risk Factors through Twitter - conducted in the US last year found a strong correlation between the number of tweets that indicated suicidal intentions and the number of suicides committed.

Having realised that the platform is also being used as a medium to vent and express personal trauma, Facebook has, for about a year, been sending reports on profiles of people with suicide risk to Mumbai-based suicide helpline Aasra. "In the last one year, we have received 350 such email intimations concerning Indians," says Aasra Director Johnson Thomas. Aasra then mails that person to subtly and sensitively convey that there is help at hand, in case it is needed. Facebook and Twitter did not offer any comment for this article.

Decoding Social Media Slang

I am an aggregator who has left a cookie crumb trail (while writing this) for a machine algorithm to follow. So, can it point out to my boss the scoops and their origin? In all probability, yes. For an all-devouring algorithm, no crumb, no target, is too small. Algorithms (at their core, a step-by-step method for doing a job) can sound scary, but social media analysts depend on these little-understood, obscure mathematical creatures.

So, information posted publicly on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites are fair game for these data predators. Suppose you click ‘like’ on Facebook, you’re giving away a lot more than you might think. Your ‘likes’ can be pieced together to form an eerily true portrait of yourself. A study of 58,000 volunteers by Michal Kosinski and David Stillwell (University of Cambridge) and Thore Graepel (Microsoft Research, Cambridge) charts the chances of an accurate prediction: 67 per cent for single versus in a relationship, 73 per cent for cigarette smoking, 70 per cent for alcohol drinking, 65 per cent for drug use, 88 per cent for male homosexuality, 75 per cent for female homosexuality, and 93 per cent for gender.

Another point is not all data out there are cold facts. Far from that, most are sentiments and slang: sweet, bitter and often intimate. “Wazup homie!! howz it going!!” is a profound example. “‘Yo, homie, I'll be at my house in case you want to come kick it later” is another. How is a number cruncher such as an algorithm expected to crunch slang and emotions? But experts insist there’s a bull market in sentiments and foul language. And an emerging field known as sentiment analysis is taking shape. The simplest algorithms here work by scanning keywords to categorise a statement as positive or negative, based on a simple binary analysis (‘love’ is good, ‘hate’ is bad). But a more reliable analysis requires decoding many linguistic shades of gray. For example, to get at the true intent of a statement like ‘dude, i'm like......duuuude,’ the software will have to activate several different filters, including polarity (is the statement positive or negative?), intensity (what is the degree of emotion being expressed?) and subjectivity (how partial or impartial is the source?)

“People first thought that emotions expressed on social media were just cute and stupid,” says Sreeju Thankan who has done computer science and engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee and is now working at Mango Solutions. “Now, they are recognising it as a rich vein.” But translating slang into binary code can be much tougher. “Sentiments are different from conventional facts,” says Thankan. “There is a long way for slang patrol to go.” For casual web surfers, a simpler sentiment-analysis tool, Tweetfeel, is available. It tells you the numbers of positive and negative tweets on a given topic. It also gives you their percentages. Its analysis is based not just on emoticons, but also words and phrases.

Ashish Sharma

Last October in Mumbai, a 17-year-old college student, Aishwarya Dahiwal, killed herself after her parents barred her from using Facebook. "Is Facebook so bad? I cannot stay in a home with such restrictions as I can't live without Facebook," her suicide note reportedly read. The parents were in utter shock. "Girls are more prone to putting personal and emotional messages on social networking sites," says Manju Chhabra, child counsellor who runs an organisation called Cactus Lily in Delhi. And they tend to get more affected by what people say and how they react. "And comments on this very impersonal medium which we are giving a very personal space can be very cruel."

Seema Hingorrany, a Mumbai-based psychologist, says one of her recent patients is a girl studying in Class 9. Her friend from school had uploaded a photo of herself, which got 200 'likes'. That upset the patient terribly because it reinforced her belief that she was unattractive and she became extremely upset, to the extent that her parents felt she needed counselling. Constant use of Facebook can affect one's self-esteem, if it's already low. Another of Hingorrany's patient was a 30-year-old who took to social media after he lost his job. But seeing other people's photos and updates made him increasingly jealous, and he began posting nasty comments. The recipients of his ire began "unfriending" him, which only made him more withdrawn.

Irrational behaviour can also be seen in the world of random video chat. Sites like Omegle and Chatroulette aim to bring together surfers together with the help of webcams. The promise is irresistible: an endless stream of visitors in your room. When Ashish Sharma (the author of the accompanying article) logged on, he met a gaggle of girls who giggled endlessly, a German painter who was looking for his muse and wanted him to pose in a state of undress, a Swede who danced around and asked him to sing in praise of his bottom, and a man with an iron mask. It was crude and shocking. The excessively sexual behaviour can be unsettling for an unsuspecting (and young) visitor.

There is another side to it. "Twitter posts," says an article posted on rediff.com, "have saved lives. A man lost on a ski slope in Switzerland got help when he tweeted his predicament. Another got bail from arrest as his friends discovered from a tweet that he was jailed in a foreign country." Human resource managers check out the profiles of job applicants on social media. "People might mask many judgmental things in an interview; there is a possibility that they might express it on social media," says Debdas Sen, leader of technology consulting, PricewaterhouseCoopers. "Inclusion and diversity are important for us." But job seekers have become wise to it. That's why many airbrush their social media profiles. All politically incorrect posts are removed. Friends are treated lavishly offline so that they write nice posts on Facebook pages. Some even hire professional photographers for as much as Rs 20,000 to paste good profile pictures.

But those who hire have started to see through it. Says Murthy of Pinstrip, "One can easily figure out the truthfulness of your statements by seeing what your friends are saying." One human resource manager says he pays more attention to what people post after 10 pm because "it tends to be more truthful". A senior functionary of a Gurgaon-headquartered firm says that he had hired somebody after he had found nothing suspicious on his LinkedIn profile; it was only later he found out that this person had been involved in some financial misdemeanour in his earlier job. "His LinkedIn profile had no clues, he was not on Facebook. That should have struck me," he says. Of course, the person was asked to leave.

Sunil Abraham, the executive director of Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, says social media has made people forget the distinction between private, semi-private and public statements. "Speech used to be ephemeral, but Internet has given it the power it never had," he says. "Internet never forgets." The fact that traces of a communication may remain in cyberspace even after they have been deleted has prompted a legislation called the Right to Erasure by the European Union. Under the law, earlier called Right to be Forgotten, an individual can request all his data to be erased, including by third parties. India is also mulling a similar legislation under its Privacy Bill.

Those at the bottom of the social pyramid, who have little to lose, express themselves most freely on social media, while those with reputations to protect are cautious. The consequences can be serious, as the Mumbai girl who questioned the city's shutdown after Bal Thackeray's death in November 2012 on Facebook and her friend who "liked" realised: both were called in by the police. It's not surprising why even standup comedians, who can't resist taking potshots at one and all, turn extremely careful before they tweet.

So, is social media good or bad? "Social media can help," Amartya Sen said at the recent Jaipur Literature Festival, "But you must read more books".

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/business-standard-january-24-2014-veenu-sandhu-surabhi-agarwal-the-net-is-taking-over

FOEX Live: June 1-7, 2014

geetha — 2014-06-07T13:33:45Z

A weekly selection of news on online freedom of expression and digital technology from across India (and some parts of the world).

Delhi NCR:

Following a legal notice from Dina Nath Batra, publisher Orient BlackSwan “set aside… for the present” Communalism and Sexual Violence: Ahmedabad Since 1969 by Dr. Megha Kumar, citing the need for a “comprehensive assessment”. Dr. Kumar’s book is part of the ‘Critical Thinking on South Asia’ series, and studies communal and sexual violence in the 1969, 1985 and 2002 riots of Ahmedabad. Orient BlackSwan insists this is a pre-release assessment, while Dr. Kumar contests that her book went to print in March 2014 after extensive editing and peer review. Dina Nath Batra’s civil suit led Penguin India to withdraw Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History earlier this year.

The Delhi Police’s Facebook page aimed at reaching out to Delhi residents hailing from the North East proved to be popular.

Goa:

Shipbuilding engineer Devu Chodankar’s ordeal continued. Chodankar, in a statement to the cyber crime cell of the Goa police, clarified that his allegedly inflammatory statements were directed against the induction of the Sri Ram Sene’s Pramod Muthalik into the BJP. Chodankar’s laptop, hard-disk and mobile Internet dongle were seized.

Jammu & Kashmir:

Chief Minister Omar Abdullah announced the withdrawal of a four-year-old SMS ban in the state. The ban was instituted in 2010 following widespread protests, and while it was lifted for post-paid subscribers six months later, pre-paid connections were banned from SMSes until now.

Maharashtra:

In a move to contain public protests over ‘objectionable posts’ about Chhatrapati Shivaji, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar and the late Bal Thackeray (comments upon whose death led to the arrests of Shaheen Dhada and Renu Srinivasan under Section 66A), Maharashtra police will take action against even those who “like” such posts. ‘Likers’ may be charged under the Information Technology Act and the Criminal Procedure Code, say Nanded police.

A young Muslim man was murdered in Pune, apparently connected to the online publication of ‘derogatory’ pictures of Chhatrapati Shivaji and Bal Thackarey. Members of Hindu extremists groups celebrated his murder, it seems. Pune’s BJP MP, Anil Shirole, said, “some repercussions are natural”. Members of the Hindu Rashtra Sena were held for the murder, but it seems that the photographs were uploaded from foreign IP addresses. Across Maharashtra, 187 riotingcases have been registered against a total of 710 persons, allegedly in connection with the offensive Facebook posts.

On a lighter note, Bollywood hopes for a positive relationship with the new government on matters such as film censorship, tax breaks and piracy.

News & Opinion:

Shocking the world, Vodafone reported the existence of secret, direct-access wires that enable government surveillance on citizens. India is among 29 governments that sought access to its networks, says Vodafone.

I&B Minister Prakash Javadekar expressed his satisfaction with media industry self-regulation, and stated that while cross-media ownership is a matter for debate, it is the legality of transactions such as the Reliance-Network18 acquisition that is important.

Nikhil Pahwa of Medianama wrote of a ‘right to be forgotten’ request they received from a user in light of the recent European Court of Justice ruling. The right raises a legal dilemma in India, LiveMint reports. Medianama also comments on Maharashtra police’s decision to take action against Facebook ‘likes’, noting that at the very least, a like and a comment do not amount to the same thing.

The Hindu was scorching in its editorial on the Pune murder, warning that the new BJP government stands to lose public confidence if it does not clearly demonstrate its opposition to religious violence. The Times of India agrees.

Sanjay Hegde wrote of Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (as amended in 2008) as a medium-focused criminalization of speech. dnaEdit also published its criticism of Section 66A.

Ajit Ranade of the Mumbai Mirror comments on India as a ‘republic of hurt sentiments’, criminalizing exercises of free speech from defamation, hate speech, sedition and Section 66A. But in this hurt and screaming republic, dissent is crucial and must stay alive.

A cyber security expert is of the opinion that the police find it difficult to block webpages with derogatory content, as servers are located outside India. But data localization will not help India, writes Jayshree Bajoria.

Dharma Adhikari tries to analyze the combined impact of converging media ownership, corporate patronage of politicians and elections, and recent practices of forced and self-censorship and criminalization of speech.

Elsewhere in the world:

In Pakistan, Facebook has been criticized for blocking pages of a Pakistani rock band and several political groups, primarily left-wing. Across the continent in Europe, Google is suffering from a popularity dip.

The National Council for Peace and Order, the military government in Thailand, has taken over not only the government,but also controls the media. The military cancelled its meetings with Google and Facebook. Thai protesters staged a quiet dissent. The Asian Human Rights Commission condemned the coup. For an excellent take on the coup and its dangers, please redirect here. For a round-up of editorials and op-eds on the coup, redirect here.

China has cracked down on Google, affecting Gmail, Translate and Calendar. It is speculated that the move is connected to the 25^th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests and government reprisal. At the same time, a Tibetan filmmaker who was jailed for six years for his film, Leaving Fear Behind, has been released by Chinese authorities. Leaving Fear Behind features a series of interviews with Tibetans of the Qinghai province in the run-up to the controversial Beijing Olympics in 2008.

Japan looks set to criminalize possession of child pornography. According to reports, the proposed law does not extend to comics or animations or digital simulations.

Egypt’s police is looking to build a social media monitoring system to track expressions of dissent, including “profanity, immorality, insults and calls for strikes and protests”.

Human rights activists asked Facebook to deny its services to the election campaign of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, ahead of elections on June 3.

Call for inputs:

The Law Commission of India seeks comments from stakeholders and citizens on media law. The consultation paper may be found here. The final date for submission is June 19, 2014.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

For feedback and comments, Geetha Hariharan is available by email at geetha@cis-india.org or on Twitter, where her handle is @covertlight.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/foex-live-june-1-7-2014

Facebook: Limiting access to social media can restrict freedom of speech

praskrishna — 2013-08-08T04:07:38Z

In its counter-affidavit to the PIL in the Delhi high court, Facebook has argued that limiting access to social media can limit an individual's freedom of speech and expression.

Kim Arora's article was published in the Times of India on August 1, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

The PIL, among other things, deals with the issue of minors accessing Facebook services, arguing that under the Indian Contract Act 1872, minors can't enter into a contract. The PIL will be heard next on Friday.

Last year, the UN Human Rights Council had passed a resolution declaring access to Internet as a human right. Facebook has argued making a similar point for access to social media. "The Internet is increasingly becoming a platform for citizens including minors to interact and voice their opinions and, therefore, a meaningful interpretation of the right to freedom of speech and expression would include the freedom to access social media," the counter-affidavit says.

"It can be argued that in a technologically mediated society, social media and communication infrastructure is essential to exercise freedom of expression," says Sunil Abraham, director, Bangalore-based Center for Internet and Society.

Cyber lawyer Pavan Duggal sees it as "hyperbole". "The issue still remains that a minor doesn't have the capacity to act under the Contract Act," he says. Lawyers say that if a contract is entered into for free service in exchange of personal information, it is a "consideration" (like cash or kind) under the Indian Contract Act 1872. The Act says, "All agreements are contracts if they are made by the free consent of parties competent to contract, for a lawful consideration and with a lawful object, and are not hereby expressly declared to be void." It then lists minors as incompetent to contract, and says, "The agreement, if any party is minor, is void ab initio." However, Abraham points out that "It is not an offence to enter a void contract."

To weed out fake profiles and children's profiles, the PIL, filed by former RSS ideologue K N Govindacharya, argues that "obligation is cast upon Facebook and other social networking sites to verify the authenticity of each and every subscribers (sic) which is mandatory for Mobile companies in telecommunication sector.

Mumbai-based professor of law Saurav Datta feels this sort of authentication could have serious privacy implications. "There is no way they can verify users without impinging on their privacy. The goal of the PIL is wrong. We need to protect children, not keep people out," says Datta.

Abraham says that a possible way to deal with this can be on the lines of Canadian privacy law where a privacy commissioner can raise such concerns with the service provider directly.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-times-of-india-aug-1-2013-kim-arora-facebook-limiting-access-to-social-media-can-restrict-freedom-of-speech

Daunting task ahead for investigative agencies with WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption

praskrishna — 2016-04-09T09:45:12Z

Messaging service WhatsApp's decision to roll out end-to-end encryption for over 1 billion subscribers has been hailed as a positive step by users across the world, although things are set to get tougher for law enforcement and investigative agencies in India seeking to track terrorists.

The article by Neha Alawadhi was published in Economic Times on April 8, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

"It was anyway difficult to get any kind of data from WhatsApp and now it is going to be even more difficult," said a person familiar with the working of these agencies who did not wish to be identified.

Encryption scrambles data such as text messages, photos and documents and makes them unintelligible for unintended recipients. A service that is encrypted end-to-end cannot be monitored or intercepted. No one, except the people or group communicating with each other, can access the data. If telecom companies, Internet providers or even companies that run messaging services try to intercept the message, all they would get is garbled data.

While chats will not be accessible, associated information known as metadata will be available, such as when the conversations took place, the identities of senders and recipients, their locations, mobile numbers, profile photos and address books, which may be useful for security agencies.

"Definitely for law enforcement it means a big headache, but the metadata is there and with metadata, if you have a couple of other bits of information, you can piece it together," said Sunil Abraham, executive director at Bengaluru-based research organisation Centre for Internet and Society. "Agencies can get the metadata, but they won't get the payload unless they're able to compromise the device. And that intelligence agencies like NSA (National Security Agency of the US) have been able to do in the past."

While encryption offers privacy and security to users, it is the bane of law enforcement agencies globally, as exemplified most recently and notably by the Apple-FBI dispute in the US. The Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI asked Apple to weaken its encryption to access a dead terrorist's iPhone data and after the company refused, hacked into the device with help from a third party.

In India, it is difficult to bring US-based companies to the negotiating table. "We have had minimum cooperation from WhatsApp. All the data is controlled in the US and they rarely hand over the data that we request. We don't ask them for content. We only ask for metadata," said another person familiar with the process who declined to be identified.

While the Indian IT Act gives wide-ranging powers to the government to ask for access to encrypted information, very few requests for information, very few requests for information take the legal route. One reason is the long time that it takes to process such requests - on average, over three years - and the other, especially in the case of WhatsApp, is little or no cooperation, according to government officials.

WhatsApp, based in Mountain View, California, did not respond to an email request for comment. The messaging company was acquired by Facebook in 2014.

How security and investigative agencies in India use the data they access is also a grey area. "We do not have a privacy legislation here which will take care of the concerns that people have with respect to use of data. If the government needs to have access to communications, they also need to ensure there are adequate safeguards in place," said Prasanth Sugathan, counsel at Software Freedom Law Centre.

"In practice, end-to-end encryption will bring the end user and the device into focus, rather than WhatsApp or any particular messaging service. This should be a trigger for greater clarity on India's data protection policy," said Arun Mohan Sukumar, who heads the cyber security and internet governance initiative at think tank Observer Research Foundation.

In India, requests for information from companies such as WhatsApp and Google are handled by the Ministry of Home Affairs or the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team. Emails to both were unanswered at the time of going to print.

The Indian government was involved in a long-standing dispute with BlackBerry over access to encrypted data on its messenger and corporate email service. BlackBerry set up servers in Mumbai to comply with local regulations, but said it could not access encrypted data on its enterprise servers.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-april-8-2016-neha-alawadhi-daunting-task-ahead-for-investigative-agencies-with-whatsapp-end-to-end-encryption

Beyond Public Squares, Dumb Conduits, and Gatekeepers: The Need for a New Legal Metaphor for Social Media

amber — 2021-05-31T10:23:36Z

In the past few years, social networking sites have come to play a central role in intermediating the public’s access to and deliberation of information critical to a thriving democracy. In stark contrast to early utopian visions which imagined that the internet would create a more informed public, facilitate citizen-led engagement, and democratize media, what we see now is the growing association of social media platforms with political polarization and the entrenchment of racism, homophobia, and xenophobia.

There is a dire need to think of regulatory strategies that look beyond the ‘dumb conduit’ metaphors that justify safe harbor protection to social networking sites. Alongside, it is also important to critically analyze the outcomes of regulatory steps such that they do not adversely impact free speech and privacy. By surveying the potential analogies of company towns, common carriers, and editorial functions, this essay provides a blueprint for how we may envision differentiated intermediary liability rules to govern social networking sites in a responsive manner.

Introduction

Only months after Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory — a feat mired in controversy over alleged Russian interference using social media, specifically Facebook — Mark Zuckerberg remarked that his company has grown to serve a role more akin to government, rather than a corporation. Zuckerberg argued that Facebook was responsible for creating guidelines and rules that governed the exchange of ideas of over two billion people online. Another way to look at the same argument is to acknowledge that, today, a quarter of the world’s population (and of India) are subject to the laws of Facebook’s terms and conditions and privacy policies, and public discourse around the globe is shaped within the constraints and conditions they create. Social media platforms, like Facebook, wield hitherto unimaginable power to catalyze public opinions, causing a particular narrative to gather steam — that Big Tech can pose an existential threat to democracy.

This, of course, is in absolute contrast to the early utopian visions which imagined that the internet would create a more informed public, facilitate citizen-led engagement, and democratize media. Instead, what we see now is the growing association of social media platforms with political polarization and the entrenchment of racism, homophobia, and xenophobia. The regulation of social networking sites has emerged as one of the most important and complex policy problems of this time. In this essay, I will explore the inefficacy of the existing regulatory framework, and provide a blueprint for how to think of appropriate regulatory metaphors to revisit it.

Click on to read the article published by IT for Change
Download the PDF (34,328 Kb) to read the full article, pages 126 - 138.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/it-for-change-amber-sinha-beyond-public-squares-dumb-conduits-and-gatekeepers

Digital Native: Delete Facebook?

nishant — 2018-05-06T03:08:25Z

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

The article was published in Indian Express on April 8, 2018.

One fine day, we all woke up and were told that Facebook sold our data to Cambridge Analytica and then they made dastardly profiles of us to target us with advertisement and political propaganda, so, we made a beeline for #DeleteFacebook. The most surprising part about the expose is how much of a non-event it is. We have been warned, at least since the Edward Snowden revelations, if not earlier, that our data is the new oil, coal and gold. It is being used as a resource, it is being mined from our everyday digital transactions, and it is precious because it can result in a massive social engineering without our consent or knowledge. Ever since Facebook started expanding its domain from being a friends-poke-friends-with-livestock website, we have been warned that the ambition of Facebook was never to connect you with your friends but to be your friend.

Time and again, we have been told that the sapient Facebook algorithm remembers everything you say and do, anticipates all your future needs, and listens to the most banal litany of your life. More than your mom, your partner or your shrink, it’s the Facebook algorithm which is interested in all your quotidian uselessness. It is not the stranger who accesses your post that should worry you. The biggest perpetrator of privacy violations on Facebook is Facebook itself. There is good reason why a company that offers its prime products for free is valuated as one of the richest corporations in the world. The product of Facebook – it has always been known – is us.

Why, then, are we suddenly taken aback at the fact that Facebook sold us? And while we are sharing our thoughts (ironically on Facebook) about deleting our profiles, the question that remains is this: How much of your digital life are you willing to erase? Because, and I am sorry if this pricks your filter bubble, Facebook’s problem is not really a Facebook problem. It is almost the entire World Wide Web, where we lost the battle for data ownership and platform openness more than two decades ago. Name one privately owned free service that you use on the internet and I will show you the section in its “terms and services” where you have surrendered your data. In fact, you can’t even find government services, tied up with their private partners, where your data is safe and stored in privacy vaults where it won’t be abused.

It is time to realise that the popular ’90s meme “All your base are belong to us” is the lived reality of our digital lives. As we forego ownership for convenience, as our governments sold our sovereignty for profits, and as digital corporations became behemoths that now have the capacity to challenge and write our constitutional and fundamental rights, we are waking up to a battle that has already been fought and resolved. A large part of our physical hardware to access the internet is privately owned. This means that almost all our PCs, tablets, phones, servers are owned and open to exploitation by private companies. Every time your phone does an automatic update or your PC goes into house-cleaning mode, you have to realise that you are being stored, somewhere in the cloud in ways that you cannot imagine.

It is tiring to hear this alarm and panic around Facebook’s data trading. Not only is it legal, it is something that has been happening for a while, most of us have been aware of it, and we have resolutely ignored it because, you know, cute cats. If somebody tells you that they are against privately owned physical property and are going to start a revolution to take away all private property and make it equally shared with the public, you would laugh at them because they are arriving at the battle scene after the war is over. This digital wokeness trend to #DeleteFacebook is the digital equivalent of that moment. If you want to fight, fight the governments and nations who can still protect us. Participate in conversations around Internet governance. Take responsibility to educate yourself about the politics of how the digital world operates. But stop trying to feel virtuous because you pulled out of a social media network, pretending that that is the end of the problem.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-april-8-2018-digital-native-delete-facebook

How Next-Gen Smartphone Users are Being Bought and Sold

praskrishna — 2013-09-05T10:48:18Z

After facebook and google, Twitter became the latest to buy millions of Indian smartphone users in July.

This article by Rohin Dharmakumar was published by Forbes India Magazine on August 13, 2013, and later mirrored in IBN Live on August 19, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Now, the actual announcement was about how Twitter had partnered with Vodafone India to offer its services ‘free of cost’ to mobile subscribers for three months. It had already inked similar deals with Airtel and Reliance, according to Medianama, a digital media news site. Google and Facebook, too, announced such agreements during the past year, whereby mobile subscribers could use their service ‘free of cost’ through their phones.

Nothing is really ‘free’ on the web, which is why we have the adage: “If you’re not paying for it, you are the product”. So these large web companies are actually buying millions of first-time mobile internet users by paying off their respective mobile operators. Of India’s 137 million internet users, roughly 120 million access mobile internet.

Sunil Abraham, director of the Centre for Internet & Society in Bangalore, thinks India could be going down the Indonesia route. “If you ask the average Indonesian mobile user if he or she has internet access, they might say no. Ask them if they have Facebook or Twitter, and they’ll say yes!” Incidentally, 96 percent of Indonesians use social media, mostly from their phones.

Smaller competitors to Facebook, Google and Twitter who can’t afford to pay mobile operators on similar terms will find their competitiveness shrinking. Meanwhile, a large number of Indians will balk at paying for internet usage on their phones because the social networks are all ‘free’.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/forbesindia-august-13-2013-rohin-dharmakumar-how-nextgen-smartphone-users-are-being-bought-and-sold

FOEX Live: June 16-23, 2014

geetha — 2014-06-24T10:23:18Z

A weekly selection of news on online freedom of expression and digital technology from across India (and some parts of the world).

A quick and non-exhaustive perusal of this week’s content shows that many people are worried about the state of India’s free speech following police action on account of posts derogatory to or critical of the Prime Minister. Lawyers, journalists, former civil servants and other experts have joined in expressing this worry.

While a crackdown on freedom of expression would indeed be catastrophic and possibly unconstitutional, fears are so far based on police action in only 4 recent cases: Syed Waqar in Karnataka, Devu Chodankar in Goa and two cases in Kerala where college students and principals were arrested for derogatory references to Modi. Violence in Pune, such as the murder of a young Muslim man on his way home from prayer, or the creation of a Social Peace Force of citizens to police offensive Facebook content, are all related, but perhaps ought to be more carefully and deeply explored.

Kerala:

In the Assembly, State Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala said that the State government did not approve of the registration of cases against students on grounds of anti-Modi publications. The Minister denunciation of political opponents through cartoons and write-ups was common practice in Kerala, and “booking the authors for this was not the state government’s policy”.

Maharashtra:

Nearly 20,000 people have joined the Social Peace Force, a Facebook group that aims to police offensive content on the social networking site. The group owner’s stated aim is to target religious posts that may provoke riots, not political ones. Subjective determinations of what qualifies as ‘offensive content’ remain a troubling issue.

Tamil Nadu:

In Chennai, 101 people, including filmmakers, writers, civil servants and activists, have signed a petition requesting Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa to permit safe screening of the Indo-Sri Lankan film “With You, Without You”. The petition comes after theatres cancelled shows of the film following threatening calls from some Tamil groups.

Telangana:

The K. Chandrasekhar Rao government has blocked two Telugu news channels for airing content that was “derogatory, highly objectionable and in bad taste”.

The Telagana government’s decision to block news channels has its supporters. Padmaja Shaw considers the mainstream Andhra media contemptuous and disrespectful of “all things Telangana”, while Madabushi Sridhar concludes that Telugu channel TV9’s coverage violates the dignity of the legislature.

West Bengal:

Seemingly anti-Modi arrests have led to worry among citizens about speaking freely on the Internet. Section 66A poses a particular threat.

News & Opinion:

The Department of Telecom is preparing a draft of the National Telecom Policy, in which it plans to treat broadband Internet as a basic right. The Policy, which will include deliberations on affordable broadband access for end users, will be finalised in 100 days.

While addressing a CII CEO’s Roundtable on Media and Industry, Information and Broadcasting Minister Prakash Javadekar promised a transparent and stable policy regime, operating on a time-bound basis. He promised that efforts would be streamlined to ensure speedy and transparent clearances.

A perceived increase in police action against anti-Modi publications or statements has many people worried. But the Prime Minister himself was once a fierce proponent of dissent; in protest against the then-UPA government’s blocking of webpages, Modi changed his display pic to black.

Medianama wonders whether the Mumbai police’s Cyber Lab and helpline to monitor offensive content on the Internet is actually a good idea.

G. Sampath wonders why critics of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi can’t voluntarily refrain from exercising their freedom of speech, and allow India to be an all-agreeable development haven. Readers may find his sarcasm subtle and hard to catch.

Experts in India mull over whether Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000, carries a loophole enabling users to exercise a ‘right to be forgotten’. Some say Section 79 does not prohibit user requests to be forgotten, while others find it unsettling to provide private intermediaries such powers of censorship.

Some parts of the world:

Sri Lanka has banned public meetings or rallies intended to promote religious hatred.

In Pakistan, Twitter has restored accounts and tweets that were taken down last month on allegations of being blasphemous or ‘unethical’.

In Myanmar, an anti-hate speech network has been proposed throughout the country to raise awareness and opposition to hate speech and violence.

For feedback, comments and any incidents of online free speech violation you are troubled or intrigued by, please email Geetha at geetha[at]cis-india.org or on Twitter at @covertlight.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/foex-live-june-16-23-2014

Cyber crimes shoot up 52% in India over last year

praskrishna — 2014-07-03T10:14:26Z

There has been a sharp increase in the incidence of cyber crime in the country. The number of cases registered in 2013 under the IT Act has gone up by 52 per cent to 4,192 as against 2,761 in the previous year.

The article by K.V.Kurmanath was published in the Hindu Businessline on July 2, 2014. Bhairav Acharya gave his inputs.

If you add the cases registered under the IPC, the total number of cyber crime cases crosses the 5,500-mark. Police across the country arrested 3,301 persons in connection with these cases.

Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh (undivided) have topped the list with 681 and 635 cases respectively under the IT Act, both showing an almost 50 per cent growth in cyber crimes over the previous year. In the previous year, Maharashtra had registered 471 and Andhra Pradesh 429.

Cyber security experts have been cautioning people to be careful while using the Internet. Besides increasing the security of the networks they are using, users must be careful while engaging with strangers.

A recent Microsoft report said many customer infections involve users tricked to install secondary offers, indicating a shift in malware proliferation. According to the latest data provided by the National Crime Records Bureau, the official chronicler of crime in the country, cyber crime registered under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) has shown a much higher growth rate of 122 per cent in 2013 over the previous year’s figure. IPC cases went up to 1,316 in 2013 from 595 in the previous year. Maharashtra topped the list here too with the cops booking 226 cases in this category.

Wrong nomenclature?

Bhairav Acharya of the Centre for Internet and Society feels that the term cyber crime has not been defined well. “It is time we do away with the practice of calling any crime a ‘cyber crime’ just because the person who does it uses a computer,” he said.

“Instead, I think the term ‘cyber crime’ should only be used in relation to offences that can only be committed by using information and communications technology (ICT) such as the internet (which is comprised of the world wide web, email protocols, file transfer protocols, and more) as well as network infrastructure that is not the internet,” he said.

Hence, only if there is a direct causal link between the crime and ICT and network technology should a crime be called a cyber crime, Acharya says.

Other States with a high number of cases booked under the IT Act include Karnataka (513), Kerala (349), Madhya Pradesh (282) and Rajasthan (239). Gujarat showed a decline with the number coming down to 61 from 68 in the previous year.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-business-line-july-2-2014-kv-kurmanath-cyber-crimes-shoot-up-in-india-over-last-year

Net advocacy body probing linkages between telcos and Facebook’s auto-play video option

praskrishna — 2015-10-29T00:53:55Z

Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), India’s leading internet advocacy body, which has often been critical of Facebook’s Internet.org — now called Free Basics — initiative, has said that it is looking into the possibility of Facebook helping telecom companies through its auto-play video option.

The article by Prabhu Mallikarjunan was published in the Financial Express on October 28, 2015. Sunil Abraham gave inputs.

In an interaction with FE on Tuesday, Sunil Abraham, executive director of The Centre for Internet and Society, said CIS will inititiate research on the notion that the new video option will result in 50% increase in data billing for the telecom companies. It will also look into whether this, in turn, will encourage the telecom companies to be on the Internet.org platform.

This initiative from CIS comes on the eve of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s visit to India on Wednesday, where he will address a gathering at IIT, Delhi. Facebook has been trying to hard sell the Free Basics concept at a time when the Indian government is looking to work closely with the internet major to push the Digital India initiative. “The company (Facebook) has done some good things, and also done some not so good things. The good thing is that, they have changed the name of the application and called it Free Basics. Also, they have re-enabled https and have published “the technical requirements document, through which they have eliminated the exclusivity arm both on the telco end and for OTT (Over the top) players,” Abraham said.

“How does FB gain from making the videos autoplay. It doesn’t gain. Why should the telcos be made happy? We are looking into this theory of whether auto-play video option will result in 50% increase in data billing for the telecom companies,” Abraham said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/financial-express-prabhu-mallikarjunan-october-28-2015-net-advocacy-body-probing-linkages-between-telcos-and-facebooks-auto-play-video-option

Analyzing the Latest List of Blocked URLs by Department of Telecommunications (IIPM Edition)

snehashish — 2013-02-17T07:35:25Z

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) in its order dated February 14, 2013 has issued directions to the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block seventy eight URLs. The block order has been issued as a result of a court order. Snehashish Ghosh does a preliminary analysis of the list of websites blocked as per the DoT order.

Medianama has published the DoT order, dated February 14, 2013, on its website.

What has been blocked?

The block order contains seventy eight URLs. Seventy three URLs are related to the Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM). The other five URLs contain the term “highcourt”. The order also contains links from reputed news websites and news blogs including The Indian Express, Firstpost, Outlook, Times of India, Economic Times, Kafila and Caravan Magazine, and satire news websites Faking News and Unreal Times. The order also directs blocking of a public notice issued by the University Grants Commission (UGC).

The block order does not contain links to any social media website. However, some content related to IIPM has been removed but it finds no mention in the block order. Pursuant to which order or direction such content has been removed remains unclear. For example, Google has removed search results for the terms <Fake IIPM> pursuant to Court orders and it carries the following notice:

"In response to a legal request submitted to Google, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read more about the request at ChillingEffects.org."

Are there any mistakes in the order?

The direction issued by the DoT is once again inaccurate and mired with errors. In effect, the DoT has blocked sixty one unique URLs and the block order contains numerous repetitions. By its order the DoT has directed the ISPs to block an entire blog [http://iipmexposed.blogspot.in] along with URLs to various posts in the same blog.

Reasons for Blocking Websites

According to news reports, the main reason for blocking of websites by the DoT is a Court order issued by a Court in Gwalior. The reason for issuing such a block order might have been a court proceeding with respect to defamation and removal of defamatory content thereof. However, the reasons for blocking of domain names containing the term ‘high court’, which is not at all related to the IIPM Court case is unclear. The DoT by its order has also blocked a link in the website of a internet domain registrar which carried advertisement for the domain name [www.highcourt.com].

Are the blocks legitimate?

The block order may have been issued by the DoT under Rule 10 of the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009.

The Court order seems to be an interim injunction in a defamation suit. Generally, Courts exercise utmost caution while granting interim injunction in defamation cases. According to the Bonnard Rule (Bonnard v. Perryman, [1891] 2 Ch 269) in a defamation case, “interim injunction should not be awarded unless a defence of justification by the defendant was certain to fail at trial level.” Moreover, in the case of Woodward and Frasier, Lord Denning noted “that it would be unjust to fetter the freedom of expression, when actually a full trial had not taken place, and that if during trial it is proved that the defendant had defamed the plaintiff, then should they be liable to pay the damages.” The Delhi High Court in Tata Sons Ltd. v. Green Peace International followed the Bonnard Rule and the Lord Denning’s judgements and ruled against the award of interim injunction for removal of defamatory content and stated:

“The Court notes that the rule in Bonnard is as applicable in regulating grant of injunctions in claims against defamation, as it was when the judgment was rendered more than a century ago. This is because the Courts, the world over, have set a great value to free speech and its salutary catalyzing effect on public debate and discussion on issues that concern people at large. The issue, which the defendant’s game seeks to address, is also one of public concern. The Court cannot also sit in value judgment over the medium (of expression) chosen by the defendant since in a democracy, speech can include forms such as caricature, lampoon, mime parody and other manifestations of wit.”

Therefore, it appears that the Court order has moved away from the settled principles of law while awarding an interim injunction for blocking of content related to IIPM. It is also interesting to note that in Green Peace International, the Court also answered the question as to whether there should be different standard for posting or publication of defamatory content on the internet. It was observed by the Court that publication is a comprehensive term, ‘embracing all forms and medium – including the Internet’.

Blocking a Public Notice issued by a Statutory Body of Government of India

The block order mentions a URL which contains a public notice issued by University Grants Commission (UGC) related to the derecognition of IIPM as a University. The blocking of a public notice issued by the statutory body of the Government of India is unprecedented. A public notice issued by a statutory body is a function of the State. It can only be blocked or removed by a writ order issued by the High Court or the Supreme Court and only if it offends the Constitution. However, so far, ISPs such as BSNL have not enforced the blocking of this URL.

Implementation of the order by the ISPs

As pointed out in my previous blog post on blocking of websites, the ISPs have again failed to notify their consumers the reasons for the blocking of the URLs. This lack of transparency in the implementation of the block order has a chilling effect on freedom of speech.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/analyzing-latest-list-of-blocked-urls-by-dot

A Three-Way Race Draws Delhi’s Young, and Everyone Else, Out to Vote

praskrishna — 2013-12-26T07:03:54Z

The polling stations were supposed to close at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, just after sunset. But with thousands still waiting in the dark to cast their vote in the state assembly elections, the Delhi Election Commission decided to extend the voting until 6:30 p.m. Then to 7:30 p.m.

The article by Betwa Sharma was published in the New York Times on December 4, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Finally, the Election Commission said it would wait until 9:30 p.m. to close the polls. At the polling station in the New Delhi district, those waiting in line agreed that a relatively warm winter evening was helping to draw people out to vote.

Though no official data on voter turnout had been released by 9 p.m., it was clear that voters were coming out in unprecedented numbers for this year’s Delhi state elections. Analysts were predicting that this election would break the previous voter turnout record of 61.75 percent in 1993.

Unlike in the past, this year’s contest featured a potential spoiler in the Aam Aadmi, or Common Man, Party. Its leader, the firebrand anticorruption activist Arvind Kejriwal, was battling to dethrone the state’s longtime chief minister, Sheila Dikshit of the Congress Party, and siphon votes from the other establishment choice, the Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P. (Exit polls by the local media on Wednesday night were showing that the B.J.P. was likely to win the most seats in the state assembly.)

The prospect of upending the political status quo brought out young voters like 23-year-old Hina Kousar, although she had to put up a fight with her family to cast her vote for the Aam Aadmi Party. Her mother lectured her on how governments don’t care about people, but that didn’t deter Ms. Kousar.

“They have the wrong mentality, and young people should change it,” she said. “My granny is 70 years old and I told her to vote.”

Many of the youthful voters turned voting into a social activity, both in person and online. At one polling station, most people cast their votes quietly and left, but many of the young voters came with their friends. They talked animatedly about their choices while leaving the polling stations.

Others called their families to say they had voted. Some clicked photos of each other on their smartphones and posted the images on their Facebook pages.

In less than a year, Mr. Kejriwal, 45, and his party has pasted itself quite literally on city’s consciousness with aggressive campaigns and posters of brooms, symbolizing sweeping away the old order. And that’s why he got Ms. Kousar’s vote.

“The most important thing is that he has promised to remove corruption. The money that is going into Swiss banks is our money. The rising market prices are because of it,” she said.

Several voters between the ages of 20 to 25 who were interviewed by India Ink said they were backing Mr. Kejriwal, who represented a change from the three-term winner Ms. Dikshit. The B.J.P. had no star state candidate that appealed to them, even though its prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, engaged with students at Delhi University earlier this year and is extremely active on social media.

Besides corruption, several young voters, both male and female, said that ensuring women’s safety had to be a priority for any Delhi government.

Another Kejriwal voter, Kavita, a 27-year-old teacher who goes by one name, said that Ms. Dikshit’s government hadn’t effectively improved women’s safety after the gang rape of a physiotherapy student one year ago. “I don’t feel the difference,” she said. “I still feel unsafe on the streets, so let’s see what some new leaders can do to change this.”

Abhilash Sasidharan, 26, after he cast his vote at a polling booth in New Delhi on Wednesday.Betwa Sharma Abhilash Sasidharan, 26, after he cast his vote at a polling booth in New Delhi on Wednesday.

Another Kejriwal supporter, Abhilash Sasidharan, 27, said a safe environment for women is “absolutely” the most important thing to him, but the software engineer also was moved that Mr. Kejriwal had left his lucrative job as a revenue service officer to join politics.

Kavita, 27, after she cast her vote at a polling booth in New Delhi on Wednesday.

“I don’t have the courage to step into dirty politics, but he does and I want to support that,” he said. “Look, Congress has had 15 years, so why not see if someone can do better, and all these parties should feel a threat to do better.”

But not all young people are buying Mr. Kejriwal’s promises of sweeping change. Shiv Raj Syal, 20, called them “flowery and too good to believe,” as he cast his vote for Ms. Dikshit. “He is just very new at this and I don’t think it’s wise to hand over the running of a national capital to a party with no experience,” he said.

The chief minister had focused on development, the college student said, making Delhi a hub for foreign brands and corporates, and transforming it into an international city.

Abhilash Sasidharan, 26, after he cast his vote at a polling booth in New Delhi on Wednesday.

Despite the appearance of a robust youth presence at the polls on Wednesday, analysts are waiting on the Election Commission’s numbers before declaring this election cycle the year of the youth vote.

Sanjay Kumar, an election analyst from the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi, said that as of July, only 68 percent of eligible voters between the ages of 18 and 21 had registered to vote, far lower than the 86 percent average of other demographics.

V.S. Sampath, the chief election commissioner in India, said that youth participation in the electoral process had been a priority in recent years, and several efforts including visiting universities and colleges had been made to register them, which had resulted in a “significant increase.”

In 2011, Mr. Sampath said, 119,000 voters between the ages of 18 and 19 were on the electoral rolls in Delhi, which accounted for 0.93 percent of total Delhi voters, but now the numbers had gone up to 405,000, or 3.4 percent.

Election observers have also pointed out that the hype about social media, especially Twitter, becoming a tool for political expression and organization for the youth has not necessarily translated into a surge in voting in that demographic of users.

The political debates on social media could translate into votes by the next elections, according to Sunil Abraham from the Centere of Internet and Society in Bangalore, who describes the Internet penetration as “limited,” and social media use even smaller and dominated by the economic elite.

Mr. Abraham, however, said social media is influencing the political discourse, not by motivating voters, but by influencing the coverage in mainstream media.

Relative to the country’s population, he added, social media users had a “disproportionate influence on discourse.”

But the young voters who spoke to India Ink said that at least for them, social media did play a role in drawing them into politics this year. Mr. Syal, the Congress voter, for instance, said that he had posted a message on his Facebook wall criticizing some of Mr. Kejriwal’s claims, which drew 50 comments.

And Mr. Sasidharan, the Aam Aadmi Party supporter, posted on Facebook a photo of him holding up his finger stained with ink, showing that he voted, immediately after coming out of the polling station. “I hope that it inspires more people to come and vote,” he said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/nytimes-december-4-2013-betwa-sharma-a-three-way-race-draws-delhis-young-and-everyone-else-out-to-vote

International View of the State-of-the-Art of Cryptography and Security and its Use in Practice (IV)

praskrishna — 2013-12-26T09:05:40Z

Building on the workshop in Dagstuhl in June-July 2011 (International View of the State-of-the-Art of Cryptography and Security and its Use in Practice), Beijing (International View of the State-of-the-Art of Cryptography and Security and its Use in Practice II), and Athens (International View of the State-of-the-Art of Cryptography and Security and its Use in Practice III) that set the stage for discussions on cryptography among a group of key researchers from Europe, Asia, and North America, the one day workshop in Bangalore, following AsiaCrypt 2013 will again bring together internationally recognized scientists to discuss direction and development in theoretical and applied cryptography and surrounding societal issues.

There will be four focus areas:

Real-life cryptography
Standardization
Regulatory requirements
Innovative use cases for cryptography

Each focus area will be anchored in an invited talk and/or panel, but the emphasis will be on discussion. The participants will address broad research directions in encryption and secure computation and their applications in cloud computing, smart grid, mobile and embedded computing, hardware, software, and network security. They will also examine non-technical issues surrounding deployment and adoption of new security technologies using encryption, such as privacy or economic consideration. Approaches and projects in different countries will be discussed, in order to increase awareness of the R&D activities internationally and continue to for a strong community of research and practice and in order to generate new ideas in this field.

Although the workshop will cover a broad spectrum of issues from the list presented below with a specific focus that will be announced shortly. The topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following subjects:

Secret versus public ciphers
Cipher and algorithm development process
Algorithms maturity and review
Lightweight cryptography
New requirements for cryptography for novel applications
Cipher implementation and interoperability
Standardization
Regulatory initiatives
Privacy enhancing cryptography

8:15 a.m.	Registration
8:30 a.m.	Opening statement (Organizers)
8:40 a.m.	Opening keynote (TBD)
9:10 a.m.	Panel 1 and discussion: Advances in cryptography; new use cases, Participants: Dan Bernstein (University of Illinois at Chicago), Tanja Lange (Eindhoven), Veni Madhavan (ERNET), others TBD
10.30 a.m.	Coffee break
11.00 a.m.	Panel II and discussion: Regulatory environment and standardization: Sunil Abraham (India CIS), Kazue Sako (NEC), Claire Vishik (Intel), others TBD
12.30 a.m.	Lunch
1.30 p.m.	Panel 3 and discussion: Implementation and interoperability for new environments (e.g., smart grid, Internet of things): Reji Kumar (Smart Grid India), other TBD
3.00 p.m.	Coffee break
3.30 p.m.	Panel IV and discussion: Privacy, social networking, ubiquitous connectivity and cryptography: Rene Peralta (NIST), Kumar Ranganathan, others TBD
5.00 p.m.	Thoughts and next workshop
5.20 p.m.	Closing statements (Organizers)
5.30 p.m.	Adjourn

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/international-view-of-state-of-the-art-of-cryptography-and-security-and-its-use-in-practice

Digital Citizens: Why Cyber Security and Online Privacy are Vital to the Success of Democracy and Freedom of Expression

praskrishna — 2014-01-08T04:59:10Z

Michael Oghia will give a presentation which will show why cyber security and online privacy are vital for democracy and freedom of expression.

In the time when Edward Snowden is fighting for both clemency and to be known as a brave whistle blower that exposed government wrongdoing, cyber security and online privacy have never been more important. As Jacob Applebaum discussed in May last year, and CIS’ Maria Xynou presented recently in December, surveillance throughout the world is increasing. With security apparatus’ likethe NSA and now India’s Central Monitoring System, coupled with corporate data centers around the world storing our e–mails, address books, preferences, and passwords, it is easy to see how our online privacy is increasingly being threatened and often, violated.

Indeed, online privacy is inextricably linked to freedom of expression, and freedom of expression is a fundamental civil liberty imperative to democracy. Moreover, online security and privacy are essential to good, transparent, and accountable democratic governance. This is largely because surveillance, censorship, and monitoring ultimately create environments where self-censorship is the norm, as is the fear of the government instead of spaces that allow for freedom of expression and democratic dialogue and dissent.

What I would like to accomplish my speaking at CIS is not to merely educate about the dangers posed to Internet security or to world democracy, but rather to:

Reiterate the importance of digital privacy and cyber security to the success of democracy and the continued protection of free expression.
Encourage citizens, technology specialists, Internet and privacy advocates, and others to see themselves as part of a larger system of democratic governance and civic participation. This means understanding how technical capabilities intersect with civil society, and then use them to advocate for a more open, accessible, and private cyberspace.
Reinforce that digital media literacy education is vital to ensuring a free, open, accessible, and democratic Internet.

Additionally, I want to present ideas and recommendations for what you can do to engage with these problems, and how we can collaborate together to address them.

About the Public Intelligence Project

The Public Intelligence Project is an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit think tank conducting research, education, and advocacy on the importance of diversity, critical thinking, dialogue, and freedom of expression. We seek to promote more robust systems of participatory democracy, civic engagement, and conflict prevention in order to create a culture of democracy.

Michael Oghia

Michael is responsible for a new project at Meta-Culture called the Public Intelligence Project, which focuses on expanding participatory democracy, civic engagement, and conflict prevention by conducting research, education, and advocacy on the intersections between diversity, dialogue, critical thinking, and freedom of expression. While new to the conflict resolution field, as a poet, musician, editor, writer, blogger, and activist, he is well-versed in the importance of freedom of expression and participating in the democratic process. He was born in Kentucky to Lebanese-Syrian parents, and after graduating with a BS in sociology from the University of Louisville, he moved to Lebanon to pursue an MA in sociology from the American University of Beirut. There, he had the opportunity to witness the Arab Revolutions first-hand while research about topics such as Internet ownership in the Middle East, social movements, Arab media, globalization, Arab youth and family, and his thesis subject, romantic love in the Arab world. Michael enjoys engaging Twitter conversations, and has an unnatural affinity for crunchy peanut butter.

Date: Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Time: 6.30 p.m. to 8.00 p.m.
Talk by: Michael Oghia
Title: Research & Advocacy Consultant, and Project Manager
Organisation: Meta-Culture / Public Intelligence Project
Websites: www.meta-culture.in <http://www.meta-culture.in> & www.publicintelligenceproject.org <http://www.publicintelligenceproject.org>

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/why-cyber-security-and-online-privacy-are-vital-for-success-of-democracy-and-freedom-of-expression