Centre for Internet and Society

Laird Brown

praskrishna — 2013-05-10T17:59:20Z

Laird Brown

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Lack of clarity about cashless and online transactions makes digital payments more worrisome

praskrishna — 2016-12-02T16:20:39Z

Even as demonetisation pushes for more and more cashless and online transactions through, e-wallets, banks and other such apps, there is a serious lack of clarity on how these companies handle customer data, and how it is shared with other entities. "Data is the new oil," is an oft repeated phrase in nearly every technology related conversation that comes up anywhere in India today.

The article by Neha Alawadhi was published in the Economic Times on December 1, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

However, the handling of this data, most of which carries some of our most personal information, has little protection if it is misused by a private or government entity.

Sample this: at an industry event, a Bengaluru-based startup claimed to solve the problem of credit worthiness of individuals for small loans by using some unusual means. To determine credit worthiness, the company maps everything in your phone — right from how many SMSes you receive for non-payment of dues, to how you fill out your loan application form. The company also claims that it can map, using your phone data, the area of your residence and office.

There are several other companies, especially those in the financial technology (fintech) space, doing similar mapping. The Wall Street Journal on Monday reported that more than three dozen local governments across China are compiling digital records of social and financial behaviour to rate credit worthiness. A person gets a score deduction for violations such as fare cheating, jaywalking and violating family-planning rules.

India may be some distance away from such a credit scoring system, but the increased use of online transactions — financial or otherwise — is sure to lead to similar business models.

"You have no clue what data you are sharing with fintech companies. They are collecting data from other sources and combining it to assess your credit score," said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet Society.

For example, there is no clarity on what an e-wallet company does with your details and transaction history even after you delete the app. "If there is large level of customer migration of users from an app company, they will just become a data analytics company. The bigger danger in future is the growth of large data intermediaries which are similar to Visa and Mastercard networks, which purchase big databases and further sell this data and build their services or product on top of that. There are large privacy concerns there," said Apar Gupta, advocate and Internet policy expert. While lack of a privacy law or controller has been a long standing concern, the existing law for data protection — Section 43(A) of the Information Technology Act— also offers only very basic protection and is "grossly inadequate", according to Abraham.

To make matters worse, they also lack a strict enforcement mechanism. "We don’t know what are the data practices (adopted by apps). There is no privacy controller or some other body, so it is very difficult for a user to know what are the actual ways their data is being implemented," said Gupta.

There have also been cases of government entities making sensitive and personal information public. Earlier this year, DataMeet, a community of data science enthusiasts, found that Bengaluru Police released 13,000 call data records (CDR) of potential on-going investigations during a hackathon with focus on solving problems of cities.

"There has been very little talk about data ethics and data practices in India. But cases of misuse of data are frequent," noted DataMeet member Srinivas Kodali in a blogpost.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-december-1-2016-neha-alawadhi-lack-of-clarity-about-cashless-and-online-transactions-makes-digital-payments-more-worrisome

Lab

praskrishna — 2012-10-02T03:20:44Z

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Kuch-spice

praskrishna — 2012-03-20T12:45:45Z

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Kristoffer Gansing

praskrishna — 2010-10-19T12:10:41Z

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kristoffer

praskrishna — 2010-10-19T12:17:17Z

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Kristofer

praskrishna — 2010-10-19T12:19:38Z

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Krishnarajapet Workshop

praskrishna — 2013-09-05T05:09:59Z

Krishnarajapet Workshop

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Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop (Coverage in Vijaya Vani)

praskrishna — 2013-09-05T06:45:12Z

Prajavani covered the Kannada Wikipedia workshop organised by the CIS-A2K team and the Kannada Sahitya Parishat of KR Pet., on August 12, 2013. A scanned version of the report is produced below.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/vijaya-vani-august-12-2013-krishnarajapet-wikipedia-workshop

Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop (Coverage in Suvarna Times of Karnataka)

praskrishna — 2013-09-05T06:10:01Z

Suvarna Times of Karnataka covered the Kannada Wikipedia workshop organised by the CIS-A2K team and the Kannada Sahitya Parishat of KR Pet., on August 12, 2013. A scanned version of the report is produced below.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/suvarna-times-of-karnataka-august-12-2013-krishnarajapet-workshop

Krishnarajapet Wikipedia Workshop (Coverage in Prajavani)

praskrishna — 2013-09-05T05:50:24Z

Prajavani covered the Kannada Wikipedia workshop organised by the CIS-A2K team and the Kannada Sahitya Parishat of KR Pet., on August 12, 2013. A scanned version of the report is produced below.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/prajavani-august-12-2013-krishnarajapet-workshop

KP Rao feted

praskrishna — 2013-04-15T16:47:29Z

KP Rao who had designed fonts for Indian languages including Kannada and devised the first phonetic keyboard driver for Indian languages, was felicitated at a programme organised at Sahyadri College of Engineering and Management on Tuesday, reports DHNS from Mangalore.

This was published by Deccan Herald on April 10, 2013. Dr. U.B.Pavanaja was quoted.

Speaking after the felicitation, he said the biggest challenge in those days was to display and print the characters of our languages.

The computers used and spoke only one language. The system of putting in Indic text phonetically was his invention and all keyboard softwares for Indian languages use this method.

Kannada wikipedia editor UB Pavanaja said Rao had created a mechanism for feeding Indic characters into computers. Later, he released a free software for Kannada called 'Sediyapu,' he said.

Below is a scanned version of the report published in the Deccan Herald:

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/deccan-herald-april-10-2013-kp-rao-feted

Korean Trans Cine-Media in Global Contexts: Asia and the World Event

praskrishna — 2013-03-21T10:31:35Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/korean-trans-cine-media-in-global-contexts.pdf

Korean Trans Cine-Media in Global Contexts: Asia and the World

praskrishna — 2013-03-21T10:32:40Z

This conference to be held from March 27 to 29, 2013 is being organized by Trans - Asia Screen Culture Institute, Cinema Studies, Korean National university of Arts, Korean Film Archive and Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum, Waseda University.

Click to read about the conference published on the website Trans-Asia Screen Culture Institute

Nishant Shah will be participating in this event as part of our collaboration with the Inter Asia Cultural Studies consortium, to launch a new research cluster around trans-cine-media in the global context along with Kim SoYoung and Earl Jackson. He will speak on "The Asian Intercourse : Reimagining the Inter-Asia moment through ‘net-porn’ In networks".

The conference is a response to what we see as a new epistemic shift, a new possibility for the reading of Korean cinema and Korean media texts. The previous “discovery” or “acceptance” of Im Kwon-Taek at Cannes, and the ambivalent Japanese obsession with “Winter Sonata” are moments in a recognition of Korean textual achievements that, at best, maintain a hierarchical (and highly circumscribed) “tolerance” of Korean cultural production. The subsequent achievements of other directors such as Pak Chan-wook and Kim Ki-duk deepened and expanded the hermeneutic situation internationally – a tendency that has continued in recent European conferences dedicated to Korean auteurs and most recently, Kim Ki-duk’s receiving the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

Moreover, Korean transformations of Japanese media texts have advanced a new kind of alchemical conversation across media that engages both the present and the past in new, multi-vocal ways. Beyond these mass-media events that can capture the attention of journalists, is the years of work of the scholars involved with the decentering of film history and canon in the work of scholars such the late Paul Willemen. And in addition to the “external” legitimation of the international film festival circuit are the internal developments within Korean cinema – namely the recent resurgence of a vital and engaged independent cinema – in both fiction documentary films. These events create an environment in which we can return anew to Korean cinema- past, present, and future – to read and realize in ways not-here-to-fore possible.

These readings will include taking Korean cinema seriously on its own terms, but also to set Korean cinema in dialogue with other East Asian Cinemas in a global context.

The outcome of the conference will be contributed to the project entitled as “A Compendium of History of Korean Cinema” sponsored by National Research Foundation of Korea.

Click to download the full program.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/trans-review-korean-trans-cine-media-in-global-contexts

Konknni Wikipedia Workshop

praskrishna — 2013-11-15T08:19:50Z

Dalgado Konknni Akademi in collaboration with Centre for Internet & Society’s Access to Knowledge Programme is organsing a 2 day Wikipedia editing workshop at the Goa Central State Library on November 16 and 17, 2013 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

This workshop is free and open for anyone to attend. Please feel free to join hands in the campaign to promote free access to knowledge in one’s mother tongue – Konknni in Romi! This is a brilliant opportunity to showcase Konkani language in Roman script on a global platform such as Konknni Wikipedia!

Click to download the invite here. (PDF, 64 Kb)

Read more on Dalgado Konknni Akademi here
Read more on the Centre for Internet and Society here
Read more on Goa Central State Library here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/konknni-wikipedia-workshop-nov-16-17-2013