Centre for Internet and Society

DNA Poster 2

praskrishna — 2013-09-24T10:14:11Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/dna-2.pdf

UID Poster 1

praskrishna — 2013-09-24T10:15:30Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/uid-1.pdf

UID Poster 2

praskrishna — 2013-09-24T10:17:09Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/uid-2.pdf

Privacy Events Poster

praskrishna — 2013-09-24T10:19:39Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy-events.pdf

CYFY 2013: India Conference on Cyber Security and Cyber Governance

praskrishna — 2013-09-26T06:50:15Z

The Observer Research Foundation in collaboration with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry is holding the India Conference on Cyber Security and Cyber Governance at the Oberoi Hotel in New Delhi on October 14 and 15, 2013. Sunil Abraham will participate in this event as a speaker.

Click to download the full details in the event brochure.

Shri Kapil Sibal, Minister of Communications & Technology will give the inaugural address. Shri Shivshankar Menon, National Security Advisor, Government of India will give the keynote address. Shri Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State, Human Resource Development, Government of India will give the dinner table address on October 14.

On the second day, October 15, Minister Jaak Aaviksoo will give the keynote address and Shri Nehchal Sandhu, Deputy National Advisor, Government of India will give the valedictory address.

List of Speakers

Kapil Sibal, Minister for Communications and Information Technology, India
Shivshankar Menon, National Security Advisor, Government of India
Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State for Human Resource Development, India
Nehchal Sandhu, Deputy National Security Advisor, Government of India
A.P. Shah, Former Chief Justice, Delhi High Court
Arvind Gupta, Director General, Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, India
Ashish Chauhan, CEO, Bombay Stock Exchange
C. Raja Mohan, Distinguished Fellow, ORF
Christopher Painter, Office of the Coordinator for Cyber Issues, Department Of State, USA
Dirk Brengelmann, Commissioner for International Cyber Policy, Federal Foreign Office, Germany
Eric H. Loeb, Vice President, International External Affairs, AT&T
Gabriel Siboni, Director, Cyber Warfare Program, Institute for National Security Studies, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Jaak Aaviksoo, Minister of Education and Research of the Republic of Estonia
Jamie Shea, Deputy Assistant Secretary General, Emerging Security Challenges, NATO
Joe Sullivan, CSO, Facebook
John Mallery, Research Scientist, MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, USA
Maurizio Martellini, Secretary General, Landau Network-Centro Volta and IWG Executive Secretary, Italy
Michael Cheatham, Head U.S. Representative Office, Indo-US Science and. Technology Forum, USA
M.M.Oberoi, Indian Police Service, Joint commissioner of Police, Delhi Police, Government of India
Oleg Demidov, The Russian Center for Policy Studies, Russia
Peter Grabosky, Researcher, Australian National University, Australia
Prakash Nagpal, Senior Vice President, Product Marketing and Marketing, Narus
Rajan Mathews, Director General, Cellular Operators Association of India
Ram Narain, Deputy Director General (Security), Department of Telecommunication (DoT), Government of India
Sandro Gaycken, Freie Universität Berlin, Institute of Computer Science, Germany
Sean Kanuck, National Intelligence Officer for Cyber Issues, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, USA
Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore
Vijay Madan, Chief Mentor, Tata Teleservices (former Director, C-DOT), India
Vivke Lall, President & CEO, Reliance Industries Limited

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/india-conference-on-cyber-security-and-cyber-governance

Growth of Telecom Industry in India (Poster)

praskrishna — 2013-09-26T10:38:59Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/growth-of-telecom-industry-in-india.pdf

Delicensed Spectrum

praskrishna — 2013-09-26T10:40:52Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/blog/delicensed-spectrum.pdf

Internet, Society and Space in Indian Cities

praskrishna — 2013-09-26T11:14:49Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/internet-society-and-space.pdf

Goa University to make available online Konkani Wikipedia, within 6 months

praskrishna — 2013-10-03T09:35:55Z

Thick heaps of the four volumes of Konkani language ‘vishwakosh’ or encyclopedia , till now available only in hard copy, will now attain a modern access.

This blog post was published by Jagran Josh on September 30, 2013. CIS signed an MoU with Goa University for digitizing Konkani Vishwakosh under Creative Commons license.

The four volumes of encyclopaedia work, initially started by prominent Goan writer and academician late Manoharrai Sardessaiat of Goa University, will now be accessed in digitized format, alongside forming a base for a Konkani Wikipedia.

As mentioned by officials, the Konkani Wikipedia is to be ready to access within upcoming six months. With this, Goa University has turned out to be the first varsity in the nation to enter into a creative commons licence that will permit copyrighted produced data by an Indian university accessible to internet users and open to modification (wiki), making Goa University a victory of sorts of free information.

The university has signed a three-year MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with the Centre for Internet and Society's Access to Knowledge Programme. This centre represents Wikipedia in India, and now also the Konkani Wikipedia project.

After Google, Facebook and Yahoo, Wikipedia is the fourth most used asset on the internet which operates as an internet based encyclopaedia. Over Wikipedia, any of the users can upload new information and can also update or amend an existing topic. The Konkani Wikipedia is also planned to offer similar privileges to its users. GU's Konkani department and the centre will manage the development from the university campus.

"The Konkani vishwakosh covers all realms of knowledge like any other encyclopedia. The Konkani Wikipedia will act as a digitized repository of knowledge for future generations and Konkani speakers across the world. I look forward to the pleasure of going to the internet and clicking away to access a Konkani Wikipedia," GU vice-chancellor Satish Shetye said.

Shetye told, GU is delighted to relate with Wikipedia, which has become a global trend breaking the monopoly of publishers and transforming the way of sharing of knowledge into a democratic process.

GU registrar Vijayendra Kamat mentions, "At present, it takes time for a page with information in a regional language to download because they are usually found in the form of scanned pages, which are accessible as images and not text. The Konkani Wikipedia will make the text accessible as is the case of any English text on the internet”.

The Konkani vishwakosh, containing four large volumes of total of 3,632 pages, is a work of period of 14 years. It was edited by late Manoharrai Sardessai followed by the editor Tanaji Halarnkar. For the compilation process, GU Staff members, Ranjan Naik, Kalpana Naik, Kanchan Mordekar, Surekha Naik, Mukesh Thali and Shailendra Mehta contributed to it.

Konkani vishwakosh or encyclopedia covers, concisely presented world information with special weight given on information on Goa, Konkani, Goan culture, folklore, history, geography etc. The Wikipedia is offered in 20 Indian languages that includes Telugu, Assamese, Marathi, but not in language Konkani so far.

Interested Students, Professors or anyone else could contribute to this Konkani Encyclopaedia project by enrolling online at bit.ly/konkanivishwakosh, before 05 October 2013.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/jagranjosh-september-30-2013-goa-university-to-make-available-online-konkani-wikipedia-within-6-months

Inclusive Disaster and Emergency Management for Persons with Disabilities

praskrishna — 2013-10-04T06:55:59Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/emergency-services-report.pdf

The Problems With Policing Sexism on Twitter

praskrishna — 2012-11-22T03:43:40Z

In mid-April this year, Indian writer and activist Meena Kandasamy attended a beef-eating festival. Then she tweeted about it. In two hours, she got over 800 abusive tweets. Kandasamy, who lives in the southern Indian city of Chennai, was threatened with rape, acid attacks, and being burnt alive. She was called a whore, slut, and terrorist.

Kavita Rao's article was published in the Atlantic on November 20, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

"Bloody bitch, you should be gang raped and telecasted live (sic)," tweeted one persistent abuser. Another, an Indian professor living in the U.S., threatened to fling acid at her. On an average, Kandasamy claims she gets about 30 to 50 abusive tweets every day. "The idea is that an independent, thinking woman should not make her voice heard," she says.

Women-hating on Twitter is not peculiar to India. Earlier this year, women around the world shared vitriol they received on Twitter—threats of rape, torture and assault—under the trending hash tag "Men call me things." Still, Indian women are particularly vulnerable because the country remains deeply patriarchal. Indian women tweeters say that men may be abused, too, but not with such vehemence. "My male colleagues are accused of being political stooges, but I am called a whore, slut, or concubine," says Smita Prakash, a Delhi-based editor at news agency Asian News International, with more than 25,000 followers on Twitter.

Mumbai-based author and popular tweeter Kiran Manral started a blog against child sexual abuse in April 2011. Immediately, she got tweets claiming she was "destroying Indian culture" and distributing child pornography. Some followers sent her links to porn. One male tweeter boasted that he knew her address, and threatened her family.

Why not simply ignore the trolls? Women tweeters say it's not that simple. "Tweeters are hydra-headed," points out Manral. "Block one person, and another surfaces." Harini Calamur, a Mumbai-based film-maker and prolific tweeter, recently tweeted against the ban of an essay that offended right-wing Hindus. She was then persistently abused by a troll who tweeted, "Will you accept anyone speaking of your parents' sexual intercourse?" and went on to talk in graphic detail about her parents' sex lives for several hours.

The effect of all this misogyny? A quasi-censorship. "Talk about domestic issues and everyone is happy," says Prakash. "Talk about politics or religion and there will be a whole brigade of male abusers who think women should stay in the kitchen. Many women I know, especially in the media, have either left Twitter or stick to safe, dull topics." Confirms Manral, "I have stopped tweeting on political issues because it's simply not worth the trouble. I have a family; I cannot have people on the net making up stories about me."

Unfortunately, recent solutions to this abuse may create censorship of a different kind. On October 22nd, Chennai police arrested two men under the controversial Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, in what may be the first action of its kind against Twitter abusers. The men had allegedly tweeted abuse at popular singer Chinmayi Sripada. Sripada's mother, T Padmhasini, says she also received several death threats before being forced to go to the police. The contentious law prohibits messages sent via a computer or communication device that are "grossly offensive, have menacing character or cause annoyance, inconvenience, danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred, or ill will."

None of these fuzzy terms is defined, and that is precisely the problem, say cyber experts. Pranesh Prakash, policy director of the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore based organisation which works to defend Internet rights, said in a local paper, The Telegraph, "The section is clearly in violation of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech." A week or so later, on October 30th, another tweeter was arrested under Section 66A. His crime: tweeting allegations that the son of Indian Finance minister P. Chidambaram was corrupt. The man had only 16 followers, but now faces up to three years in jail.

Indian cyber watchers are now alarmed that the catch-all section may be used to silence any dissent against the government, or by religious groups desperate to take offence. Their fears are well grounded. In August, after riots in the eastern state of Assam, the Indian government blocked the Twitter accounts of several journalists and right wing groups, and deleted hundreds of Facebook pages.

Chef and popular tweeter Madhu Menon receives plenty of graphic abuse himself, but prefers to simply ignore or block abusive tweeters. "I've always opposed laws that use words like 'grossly offensive' and 'menacing nature', especially in a country that loves to take offence at the smallest things," he says. "Yes, some of those tweets can be cruel and offensive, but I'd rather have that than the kind of vague, malleable definitions that our IT laws currently use. If people are being threatened with rape or assault, there are other criminal laws to take care of that."

Counters Debarati Halder, a lawyer and founder of a counselling centre for cybercrime, "The section needs to stay, because it is the quickest, easiest way to stop abuse against women. But the police need to realize that freedom of speech is also guaranteed under the Constitution."

Calamur, Manral, and most bruised women tweeters agree that Twitter has given them far more than it has taken away, in friends, connections and a vibrant virtual community." I would rather be abused every day than freedom of speech online be curbed in any way. I don't support Section 66 at all," says Calamur firmly.

"I would like Twitter to put some kind of filters in place," suggests Prakash. "At present I can't see troll tweets if I block the user, but others who go into my 'mentions' can do so, and read the graphic abuse, which is disturbing."

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo recently pledged possible new measures to eliminate "hate speech," including hiding tweets from users without a bio, or very few followers. But this may make little difference, as hate speech is defined as hatred against race, color, sexual orientation and ethnicity, but not against women. "'Fuck off, bitch!' will still be considered humor," says Calamur, wryly.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-problems-with-policing-sexism-on-twitter

Google's 'Transparency Report' sketchy, inconclusive: Government

praskrishna — 2012-11-22T07:39:05Z

Google calls it the 'Transparency Report', but as far as Indian authorities are concerned, it is anything but. The world's largest Internet company this week published its latest half-yearly findings on government requests for access to personal information, showing that both the number of requests and the rate of denials have risen. The data, according to the world's largest democracy, are too sketchy for any clear conclusions to be drawn.

This article by Indu Nandakumar was published in the Economic Times on November 17, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The skirmish is happening during a year in which relations between the Indian government and Internet companies deteriorated, with demands to take down fake Twitter handles and web pages that the former said threatened the security of regional and religious minorities.

The sum and substance of the 'Transparency Report' is that government authorities have increased the number of requests they make for personal information of user accounts on Google-owned services, including YouTube and Gmail. Google, on the other hand, has been denying the requests at a higher rate since it first started publishing the half-yearly report in 2010.

"If we believe a request is overly broad, we seek to narrow it. We may refuse to remove content or produce information, or try to narrow the request in some cases if it was not specific enough," a Google spokesman told ET. In an emailed statement, Google said it respects the legal process in India, but is keen to meet both the letter and spirit of the law before complying.

According to Google, in the first half of 2012, various arms of the Indian government made 2,319 requests but Google "partially or fully" complied with only 64% of those, compared with 70% in the same period in 2011 and nearly 80% in 2010. The government requests also sought information about 3,467 user accounts.

The department of information technology deflected requests for comment to the office of Gulshan Rai, director of India's Cyber Emergency Response Team.

India Big Market for Google

Rai said Google must "transparently" share the data pertaining to requests received by them. "It's Google data, which cannot be accessed by anybody else," he said. "We have been speaking to Google for over a year now to streamline this process and bring in more transparency, but they never came around."

What this could mean is that the government does not have a central repository of all requests for personal information by Indian authorities. So, by depending solely on Google, the government may be leaving itself in a position where it cannot challenge the authenticity of information in the Internet company's report. India's a significant market for Google, which has over 100 million users here with an over 95% market share of the Internet search market, according to research firm StatCounter. Google employs nearly 1,535 engineers in India. In August, the department of electronics & information technology sought 412 web pages hosted on Google to be blocked in connection with the controversial movie "Innocence of Muslims" as well as the mass exodus to the North-East states following riots in Assam.

"Google invariably tends to be more subjective on the adequacy of the request. Earlier they were more inclined to accept government requests. Now with the increase in the number of requests, especially since the 26/11 attacks, there is an exercise to examine the adequacy," said Pawan Duggal, a Supreme Court lawyer specialising in cyber law.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/articles-economic-times-nov-17-2012-indu-nandakumar-googles-transparency-report-sketchy-inconclusive