Centre for Internet and Society

Video Proposals: Top 14

praskrishna — 2013-09-09T01:11:40Z

Here are the ideas from our 14 digital native video contest finalists. Videos will soon be online! Voting begins from 10 March.

Joseph Francis

A young man gets ready to start his day: switching on his cable box, checking his Blackberry, listening to music, and microwaving his food. As he leaves, he turns on his iPod and sends a text message via his cell phone. Waiting for the train, he responds to emails and posts to Facebook. He sends a tweet and then gets to work. All day answering emails and phone calls while staring at a computer screen. Finally he ends his work day only to stare at a digital screen for train arrivals. Inside the train, he once again begins sending messages and tweets. Once he gets to his destination, he is told by an attractive woman to “unplug” and be with her. The End. Credits roll.

Marie Jude Bendiola

I come from a third world country where technology seemed to be hard to reach back in the 90s; especially by the not-so-privileged. As we progressed, technology has not only become ubiquitous (in malls, various institutions and technological hubs) but also, it has come to be used by the common man. My video will answer how technology bridges the gap between dreams and reality. It will be a fusion of documentary and re-enactment of real life events and dramas.

Cijo Abraham Mani

I want to convey the power of digital media by showcasing the reach of social media with specific examples from a tweet-a-thon panel discussion and #bloodaid tweets.

TJ K.M.

My video explores the spiritual aspect of digital technology and how rather than getting in the way of our spiritual expression, it is actually bringing us face to face with it, if only we choose to look. The video will be a mixture of live action and stop motion animation/puppetry where digital devices take on a transcendent character similar to nature spirits in various cultures. I plan to investigate the tendency to exclude digital devices and technology from being categorized alongside nature as if it is somehow exempt from or superior to this category. Using symbolism and motifs from various cultures such as the Native American Hopi, Balinese Hinduism and Japanese Shintoism, my video will create a world where the technology we use daily is viewed not just as a means for socio-cultural exchange and communication but is available for the nurturing of our souls if we so choose.

Mike Hickey

My video proposal would be centered on my involvement in the electronic music scene. Over the last couple of years, I have gained a large following across numerous platforms, including YouTube and Facebook that puts me as one of the top promoters of this genre. I am an admin on several Facebook pages that total around 200,000 fans combined. I am a very influential in the music I post and help shape this music scene to what it is.

Thomas Burks

We have a small production company in Birmingham, Alabama. I was hired on a year ago to do film and commercials for them as they expand into advertising and video coverage of events. We only have about 3 employees including myself, working out of our homes. We recently acquired a space to open a studio and retail location downtown where we live. We use Facebook, blogs, and viral marketing all the time to get our name out there. Our account executive is constantly monitoring our Facebook for client orders and bookings. We are beginning to use twitter to provide information more fluidly to people. We believe this might be a year of growth for our small company, as we are becoming able to provide much higher quality content. We're fully digital; constantly updating our websites and blogs, and I believe we would be able to tell a great digital story. We submit numerous small films and skits; we cover awesome concerts, and rely so heavily on the digital world to show our content. That will be the gist of our video.

John Musila

Map Kibera Trust is an organization based in Kenya’s Kibera slums. Using digital gadgets and technology, they have transformed the community by placing it on the map as it was only seen as forest when viewed on a map. They also film stories around the community and share them with the world on their YouTube channel and other social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Through this they have been able to highlight and raise awareness about the challenges the community faces. Our video would show Kibera’s role in bringing about change.

Andrés Felipe Arias Palma

I think many people are digital natives unknowingly. Being a digital native is a relationship with activism and society, not as they initially thought. It was a condition of being born in specific times and external factors. In the video, I will interview people about who and what is a digital native? How to use the Internet? What are the advantages and disadvantages for society where everything is run with the power of the Internet?

Joseph Gathecha

Black and White is a colour combination for the layman, but intensely they may be used in multiple ways or forms: as signs and symbols, as animations, decorations, and to convey myths, beliefs, taboos and many other concepts. Kibera’s slum, in the surburb of Nairobi, Kenya, is the perfect place to showcase this contrast of extremes and how digital technology is a thread connecting what I want to convey.

Martin Potter

Over a period of nearly four years, moving across small towns in Australia and South East Asia, I have seen the most extraordinary innovations at a local community level. My video will focus on these local stories with global impact. I am pursuing a PhD in participatory media and this will lend a uniquely academic perspective on the concept of collaboration, community life and innovation.

E. James Rajasekaran

I live in the temple town of Madurai in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. I am a social worker and the plight of people living in slims is something that my NGO is closely associated with. My video will bring out the efforts of the people who live in the slums of Madurai.

Anand Jha

Bangalore is home to a lot of technology start-ups. A lot of geeks, who find it limiting to work for corporations, are driving a very open source-oriented, frugally-built and extremely demanding culture. While their products are standing at the bleeding edge of technology, their personal lives too are constantly driven on the edge, every launch being a make or break day for them. The project would aim at capturing their stories, their frustration and motivation, looking at the possibilities of Indian software scene moving beyond the services and back-end office culture into a more risk prone but more passionate business of technology.

MJ

As a digital native living in a developing country l have carried out a series of both online and offline projects which have always strived to benefit Zimbabweans in a number of ways since 2000. These projects have increased my interactions with computers. I got married to the computer in 2000 when I bought my first PC; in a way, my relationship with a computer is now intimate. Even though this computer I bought was an old 386 machine made obsolete by faster Pentium III models, this did not affect my love for this computer. My video will focus on a dream-waking reality moment of my digital life.

Test User

I am a test user from the future

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/video-contest/video-proposals

Essay Review: Digital AlterNatives with a Cause

praskrishna — 2012-02-10T05:53:30Z

Hivos and the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) are pleased to announce the monthly essay review event. It starts from the midnight of February 17 and ends on the midnight of February 26. Hurry! Pick any essay from the four book collective of Digital AlterNatives with a Cause? and send us your reviews.

Hivos and CIS have consolidated their three year knowledge inquiry into the field of youth, technology and change in a four book collective “Digital AlterNatives with a cause?”.

This collaboratively produced collective, edited by Nishant Shah and Fieke Jansen, asks critical and pertinent questions about theory and practice around 'digital revolutions' in a post MENA (Middle East - North Africa) world. It works with multiple vocabularies and frameworks and produces dialogues and conversations between digital natives, academic and research scholars, practitioners, development agencies and corporate structures to examine the nature and practice of digital natives in emerging contexts from the Global South.

The event invites readers from around the world to pick any one essay from the books and review it in the week of 17-26 February 2012.

Previously found reviews can be found here.

For submission guidelines, please get in touch with: Nilofar Ansher (nilofar.ansh@gmail.com)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/events/essay-review

All India Privacy Symposium Webcast

praskrishna — 2012-02-08T08:20:08Z

Welcome to the Webcast of the All India Privacy Symposium at the India International Centre in New Delhi on 4 February 2012.

Welcome & Introduction to Privacy India

Elonnai Hickok, (Policy Advocate, Privacy India)

Panel I: Privacy and Transparency

Moderator:

Sunil Abraham, (Executive Director, Centre for Internet & Society)

Poster: Srishti Goyal, (Law Student)
Panelists:

Ponnurangam K, (Assistant Prof, IIIT New Delhi)

Chitra Ahanthem, (Journalist, Imphal)

Nikhil dey, (Social & Political Activist)

Deepak Maheshwari, (Director Corporate Affairs, Microsoft)

Gus Hosein, (Executive Director, Privacy International, UK)

Panel II: Privacy and E-Governance Initiatives

Moderator:

Sudhir Krishnaswamy (Professor, Azim Premji University)

Poster: Adrija Das,
Panelists:

Anant Maringanti, (Independent Social Researcher)

Usha Ramanathan, (Advocate&Social Activist)

Gus Hosein, (Executive Director, Privacy International, UK)

Apar Gupta, (Advocate, Supreme Court of India)

Elida Kristine Undrum Jacobsen (Researcher at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo)

Panel III: Privacy and National Security

Moderator:

Sunil Abraham, (Executive Director, Centre for Internet & Society)

Poster:

Suchitra Menon, (Law Student)

Panelists:

Menaka Guruswamy, (Advocate, Supreme Court, New Delhi)
Prasanth Sugathan, (Legal Counsel, Software Freedom Law Center)
Oxblood Ruffin, (Cult of the Dead Cow Security and Publishing Collective)

Panel IV: Privacy and Banking

Moderator:

Prashant Iyengar (Associate Professor, Jindal Law University)

Poster:

Malavika Chandu

Panelists:

M R Umarji, (Chief Legal Advisor, IBA)
N A Vijayashankar, (Cyber Law Expert)
Malavika Jayaram, (Advocate, Bangalore)

Panel V: Privacy and Health

Moderator:

Ashok Row Kavi, (Journalist & LGBT Activist)

Poster:

Danish Sheikh, (Alternative Law Forum)

Panelists:

K K Abraham, (President, Indian Network for People with HIV)
Dr. B S Bedi, (Advisor, CDAC & Media Lab Asia)
Raman Chawla, (Senior Advocacy Officer, Lawyers Collective)

The Way Forward

Natasha Vaz, (Policy Advocate, Privacy India)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/all-india-privacy-symposium-webcast

New Bill to decide on individual’s right to privacy

praskrishna — 2012-02-07T07:19:07Z

A group of experts would identify issues relating to privacy and prepare a report to facilitate authoring the Privacy Bill. Vishwajoy Mukherjee's article was published in Tehelka on 6 February 2012.

American jurist William J Brennan once famously remarked, “If the right to privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion.” Now the Government of India is on the verge of formulating, for the first time, a Privacy Bill that will lay down a specific framework to adjudicate an individual’s right to privacy.

The Planning Commission has constituted a small group of experts under the chairmanship of Justice A P Shah, former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, to identify issues relating to privacy and prepare a paper to facilitate authoring the Privacy Bill. The group will be studying the privacy laws and related bills promulgated by other countries and will also be analysing the impact of various programmes being implemented by the government, from the perspective of their impact on privacy. A detailed report with suggestions and remarks will then be handed to the Planning Commission by 31 March.

In the run-up to the formulation of a new Privacy Bill in India, an All India Privacy Symposium was held on 4 February to discuss aspects of privacy in the context of transparency, national security and internet banking. One of the most vociferous oppositions to the idea of privacy becoming an enshrined right for individuals, has come from those who believe that national security is of paramount importance. “The notion that one has to choose between privacy and national security is a false dichotomy of choice… When the judiciary adjudicates between privacy and surveillance, privacy in almost all cases loses. Especially when the word terrorism is invoked,” said Oxblood Ruffin, a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow, an information security and publishing collective. Speaking at the conference Ruffin stressed on the idea that the State shouldn’t act as a “peeping Tom” but instead respect the “sovereignty of its people.”

One of the more stark examples, in recent years, of the State clamping down on individual rights, such as the right to privacy, on the pretext of national security, is the Patriot Act in America. The Patriot Act was passed in the United States of America in the immediate aftermath of the September 2001 attacks on the twin towers, and allowed the government to scrutinise everything from “suspicious” bank accounts to wire-tapping lines of communication. Menaka Guruswamy, a lawyer at the Supreme Court of India, believes that unlike America, India does not yet have a codified view on privacy. “Privacy is a vast, fragile, and an open space in the Indian justice system,” she told Tehelka.

Though India doesn’t have clearly defined laws dealing with the issue of privacy, it does have certain directives under which surveillance methods such as wire-tapping can be done. Wire-tapping, which is regulated under the Telegraph Act of 1885, saw a major overhaul in a 1996 Supreme Court judgment, which ruled that wire-taps are a "serious invasion of an individual's privacy." The Supreme Court (SC) recognised the fact that the right to privacy is an integral part of the fundamental right to life enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution, and therefore laid down guidelines defining who can tap phones and under what circumstances. Only the Union Home Secretary, or his counterpart in the states, can issue an order for a tap, and the government is also required to show that the information sought cannot to be obtained through any other means. The SC mandated the development of a high-level committee to review the legality of each wire-tap.

“Interceptions and intrusions by the state have often gone on to help exonerate people who have been falsely accused, so I think it would be unfair to demonise wire-tapping in general. One does have to ensure though, that those who intercept exchanges do not exceed limits,” said a former chief of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW).

Besides the dimension of privacy versus surveillance, another important aspect which comes under the scanner when privacy laws are discussed is Internet banking. Details of personal bank accounts and other highly sensitive information of individuals have been whizzing around the cyber space with the advent of E-banking. Everything from booking tickets for movies and flights, to transferring money between accounts is happening via computers, and is happening fast. This growing trend has sparked a major debate on how safe is our information on the web, and what can the government do to secure it? In May 2000, the government passed the Information Technology Act, which laid down a set of laws intended to provide a comprehensive regulatory environment for electronic commerce.

The Act also addressed computer crimes such as hacking, damage to computer source code, breach of confidentiality and viewing of pornography and created a Cyber Appellate Tribunal to oversee and adjudicate cyber crimes. However, at the same time, the legislation gave broad discretion to law enforcement authorities through several provisions, such as Section 69, allowing the interception of any information transmitted through a computer resource and mandates that users disclose encryption keys or face a jail sentence up to seven years. Section 80 of the Act allows deputy superintendents of police to conduct searches and seize suspects in public spaces without a warrant.

“Confidentiality between banker and customer is the golden rule of traditional banking, but with the coming of E-banking, banks are using confidentiality as an excuse for not putting out data that shows how vulnerable they are to cyber crimes like hacking,” said N Vijayashankar, an E-business consultant, and a front runner in raising awareness about cyber laws in India. He said, “When framing privacy laws one has to ensure that banks are mandated to disclose data on breach of Internet security. That is the only way to ensure that banks take the necessary steps to secure customer information.” Malavika Jairam, a lawyer who focuses on technology and intellectual property, believes that allowing private participation in what should essentially be a sovereign State function is a dangerous path to tread on. “Tesco, a major retail chain in England, is now into E-banking… There are numerous examples of such private banking entities sharing customer information with insurance policy firms. These details are often used as markers for the kind of premium that will be set for a person,” Jairam said.

With the current pace of technological advancements fast thinning the line between individual privacy and public content, it remains to be seen what kind of privacy laws India will frame to keep up.

The original was published by Tehelka, Malavika Jayaram, a Fellow at CIS is quoted in it.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/new-bill-to-decide-on-individual2019s-right-to-privacy

Inaugural EPT Award for Dr. Francis Jayakanth

praskrishna — 2012-02-27T12:24:25Z

Programme

16.00	Welcome and introduction to the award Subbiah Arunachalam
16.05	Presenting the award and felicitation Prof. M S Swaminathan
16.15	Acceptance speech Dr Francis Jayakanth
16.25	Felicitation by eminent scientists Prof. G Baskaran Prof. K Mangala Sunder
16.35	Vote of thanks
16.40	Tea

Video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/inaugural-ept-award-for-dr.-francis-jayakanth

A new domain name, but concerns remain the same

praskrishna — 2012-02-06T08:40:47Z

It seemed like an innocuous enough change — from this week, all visitors from India to blogs hosted on Google's Blogger saw the URLs read [blogname].blogspot.in rather than the .blogspot.com they were used to. Karunya Keshav's article was published in the Hindu on 5 February 2012.

Besides, while your mum reading your latest musings would see the post with the URL ending with .in, an aunt in Australia would read the same post with .au. Google now redirects individual blogs to ‘country-code Top Level Domains' (or ccTLD), such as .in for India or .au for Australia.

The move, which means that the same content is seen across multiple domains, has raised concerns about censorship, Internet ownership, as well as questions about the effect on search ranking and search engine optimisation (SEO).

SEO Concerns

According to those who work with SEO here, search engines traditionally penalise sites with extensive “duplicate” content.

In an entry in its help and support FAQs dated January 9, Google addressed SEO concerns. While admitting that the change would have some implications on search ranking, the Internet giant claimed it was “making every effort to minimise any negative consequences of hosting Blogspot content on multiple domains”. Crawlers would index the main .com site only, it said.

However, it is unclear about how analytics, Facebook ‘likes' and other stat counters, some of which are domain specific, will change with the redirects.

The change does not affect custom domains.

Internet Boundaries

According to Google, the move is mainly to enable it to selectively block content in a particular country, in accordance with country-specific laws, while allowing it to be available to other users around the world.

“Migrating to localised domains will allow us to continue promoting free expression and responsible publishing while providing greater flexibility in complying with valid removal requests pursuant to local law,” it said.

This is similar to what Twitter announced on January 26 on its official blog, when it gave itself “the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country, while keeping it available to the rest of the world”.

Media commentators say the decisions strike against one of the earliest notions of the Internet — that it works without the constraints of nationality — and attempt to govern the Web by local laws.

“The rhetoric is that the Internet is global, but we've been seeing [governments say] how this information has to be regulated,” says Nishant Shah, director-research at the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).

He sees the decisions as “symptomatic of a much larger change”, at a time when questions of whether governments or companies should regulate the Internet are raised. “We are examining who creates, controls and disseminates information.”

The offer to enable “country-specific censorship” comes at a time when Internet companies operating in India are locked in a legal battle with the centre over dealing with problematic material online, and the Government's demand that the companies regulate/filter content before it is published.

Accountability

However, while the Internet companies may seem willing to follow the law of the land, questions have been raised about how transparent the process will be, especially in protecting the rights of users, in the face of government pressure.

Twitter insists that it will act only on “what we believe to be a valid and applicable legal request”.

“Filtering is neither desirable nor realistic,” the company has said, and promises to notify users of any requests to censor.

The notices will also be displayed on Chilling Effects (chillingeffects.org), a collaboration among law school clinics and the Electronic Frontier Foundation that helps users understand their rights and deal with legal threats to online activity.

Google already reports legal notices it receives for contentious blogs and content to Chilling Effects.

Significantly, a study by the CIS last year suggested that online intermediaries tended to err on the side of caution when faced with take down requests under the Information Technology (Intermediaries guidelines) Rules, 2011.

Both Twitter and Google have pointed out workarounds for the country-specific censorship.

Google search and Facebook already have technology to selectively prevent people from seeing items deemed illegal in a country.

The original was published in the Hindu, Nishant Shah from CIS was quoted in it.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/a-new-domain-name-but-concerns-remain-the-same-1

Common man as crusader

praskrishna — 2012-02-06T04:13:37Z

Tamil Nadu saw its highest poll turn out in 44 years when 75% of its adults exercised their franchise in the 2011 assembly elections. There were 48 lakh Google searches for ‘Anna Hazare’ on June 8 2011 (when he began his fast) compared to a negligible number on any day in 2010. A 42-year-old man immolated himself in Kutch last year when he was told to bribe officials to access his own ancestral land records.

Shalini Singh's article was published in the Hindustan Times on 4 February 2012.

Record-breaking polling turnouts. Swelling debates on social networking sites. Simmering discontent with corruption in everyday life. Are these signs of India Churning?

“This computer literate generation that’s integrating village and city is leading a dynamic movement. The voter turnouts reflect this,” says Delhi-based sociologist Susan Visvanathan. “Across the country, people are wanting ‘to know’, which leads to action,” she adds.

According to Nishant Shah, director of research at Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, a social cause on networking sites has never reached the levels that corruption did last year. “The movement targeted at the middle-class for whom corruption is a big issue was also the first middle-class movement in a long time.”

Citizens Resource and Action Initiative (Cranti) – a 2009 social movement led by activist-dancer Mallika Sarabhai became a street play in 2010. It’s about reminding people about their rights. The movement recently embarked on a voters’ awareness yatra in Gujarat. Director Bharatsingh Zala says citizens are becoming aware about how the nexus between politicians, bureaucrats and corporates is depriving them. “People have lost patience and realised that unless they become vigilant, entrenched and pervasive, corruption will not end.”

Various socio-cultural battles are being fought in India according to sociologist Shiv Visvanathan. “The mindset of the middle-class is changing which was cynical of the political system. Corruption was earlier a civil society issue with the state and party being indifferent to it. Now, the issue has become big. But the scale of anti-corruption protest is one thing, to integrate it into one’s lifestyle/livelihood is another,” he says.

India scored 3.1 on a scale of 0 to 10 (0=most corrupt, 10=most honest) on the latest Corruption Perception Index released by global civil society corruption watchdog Transparency International (TI). The score was down from 3.3 in 2010 and 3.4 in 2009. India ranked 95 out of 183 countries, more corrupt than China (75) and better off than Pakistan (134). The organisation has been working to get the Right to Service Act passed, which is the right to get a service in X number of days. Ten states have already enacted it. TI is also working on an Integrity Pact, which is the commitment of public sector undertakings (PSU) to have complaints looked into by external independent monitors. So far, 14 PSUs have signed up. “There is a shift in attitudes now. People are voicing their resentment with corruption, a reality they accepted earlier. Tools such as the Right To Information have been effective,” says PS Bawa, chairman of TI India.

There’s a long way to go. Gerson Da Cunha, convener-trustee of Agni, a 12-year-old movement for good governance in Mumbai, feels the anti-corruption movement is a ripple than a churning right now. “We can’t see a cultural shift to a cleaner administrative life until the political system stops being the generator of unaccounted money,” he says.

Read the original published in the Hindustan Times. Nishant Shah, Director-Research, Centre for Internet & Society was quoted by the newspaper.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/common-man-as-crusader

5 things you need to know about online privacy policies

praskrishna — 2012-04-30T12:02:40Z

Ever since Google tweaked it's privacy policy on January 24, online confidentiality and its future has been the topic of a raging public debate, making it hard for an average Internet user to decide what he should and should not share on an online platform. Experts say that the key here is to understand each of the terms and policies before you sign in. Indu Nandakumar writes in the Economic Times on 2 February 2012.

How is Data Retained?

The data retention policy allows the online provider to hold personal information about you. But the question is, for how long will they hold your data?

Data, here includes personal information such as your name, address, date of birth, photographs and transaction information such as when did you last log into your account, from which device, from which IP address, whose profiles did you visit etc.

It's ridiculous to ask "what bits of the privacy policy" should you read, says Graham Cluely, a senior consultant with security software developer Sophos.

"Because the only sensible answer is 'all of it.' Only you can decide if you're comfortable with it, so read it and you decide."

What are the Legal Implications?

It is important to understand under what circumstances will the website share your personal information with the Central and State government agencies. For instance, Facebook would have to share your information with the Ministry of Home Affairs since Facebook has an office in Hyderabad and comes under the purview of the Indian IT Act.

"But Twitter could deny user information to the Egyptian government during the 2011 Arab protests as it did not fall under the Egyptian jurisdiction," says Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore.

What Happens after Your Account is Deleted?

Experts say that deleting your account is not the end of it all as social networks usually store your personal information even after you delete the account. For instance, Google stores your data for nearly nine months even after you delete your GMail account.

Similarly, Twitter stores your IP address and personal information for a certain period after you delete your account.

What Personal Data is Shared with Private Organisations?

Apart from the information you share while creating the account, social networks also process and share personal data such as photographs, likes and events with their business partners and social-media analytics and monitoring agencies.

"So the basic rule is don't upload anything to the Internet which you don't want your mother-in-law or your boss to see, as you can't necessarily trust the various sites to keep them securely," says Graham Cluely.

"Further, think carefully about what other information you may be sharing online - such as your location".

What Can an Individual Do?

The easiest thing is to customise every aspect of your privacy policy, according computer security firm Kaspersky Labs. For instance, on social networks such Google Plus, Facebook and Twitter, you may limit the information you display to certain groups of people.

"India needs to have a broad and horizontal law that establishes online privacy as a right. Unlike in European countries, India doesn't have a privacy commissioner who can state the principles, interpret the data and question the online providers," says Sunil Abraham.

The original article was published in the Economic Times. Sunil Abraham has been quoted in this.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/5-things-you-need-to-know-about-online-privacy-policies-1

India needs an independent privacy law, says NGO Privacy India

praskrishna — 2012-02-03T11:46:22Z

India needs an independent privacy law though there are a number of provisions in existing legislations that protect a citizen's privacy, according to an NGO that is lobbying for the cause. The story was published in the Economic Times on 2 February 2012.

Privacy India, a conglomerate of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and the Society in Action Group (SAG), with support from Privacy International, conducted a study of the existing laws in India related to privacy over a period of one and a half years in various cities.

A report, which will be released soon, has documented their findings about privacy laws and issues in India and high-level conclave and a national symposium on privacy will be held in Delhi on February 3 and 4.

Lawyer-activist Prashant Bhushan and NCPRI head Aruna Roy will take part in the discussions on privacy in transparency, e-governance initiatives, national security, banking and health issues.

"India doesn't have a privacy law, but there are provisions for it in different laws. During the course of the research, we found that the Indian judiciary has not been very strict in overseeing the implementation of the privacy clauses in various laws," CIS member Prashant Iyengar said, while reporting some of the findings of the study.

Stricter implementation of the existing laws could go a long way in curbing most privacy issues, Iyengar said.

Published in the Economic Times on 2 February 2012. Prashant Iyengar is quoted in this.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/india-needs-an-independent-privacy-law-says-ngo-privacy-india

Privacy, speech at stake in cyberspace

praskrishna — 2012-02-03T11:27:58Z

Internet censorship is becoming a trend, with many countries around the world filtering the Web in varying degrees, writes Leslie D’Monte in Livemint on February 3, 2012.

Privacy and freedom of expression are gradually being compromised in cyberspace, say advocacy groups, with social networking sites and Internet companies buckling under pressure from governments to monitor and block “objectionable” content.

Take the case of Twitter Inc., which on 26 January posted on its official blog that “...starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country—while keeping it available in the rest of the world”. While Twitter reasoned that as it continues to grow internationally, it will have to deal with “countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression”, activists and bloggers cautioned that the new censorship policies could muffle online freedom.

“The decision of Twitter to censor its content based on the political masters’ wishes in each country is an indication that commercial interests are always higher than democratic interests for these companies. The move of the Indian government to arm-twist the major intermediaries is, therefore, expected to succeed in due course once the initial resistance wears off,” cautioned Na. Vijayashankar, a Bangalore-based e-business consultant and founder secretary of the Cyber Society of India.

In December, minister for communications and information technology (IT) Kapil Sibal said in New Delhi that the Centre had no option but to “evolve guidelines” to ensure that “blasphemous content on the Internet or television is not allowed”, since Internet and social networking sites such as Google Inc., Microsoft Corp., Twitter, Yahoo Inc., and Facebook Inc. failed “to respond to and cooperate with” the government’s request to keep “objectionable” content off their sites.

A few days later, Sibal clarified that “...this government (of the United Progressive Alliance) does not believe in censorship”. And in an interview to Mint on 1 February, Gulshan Rai—head of the elite Indian Computer Emergency Response Team and coordinator of a committee on cyberlaw—said, inter alia, “We value the freedom of speech. We do not interfere there.”

Internet censorship is a rising trend, with approximately 40 countries filtering the Web in varying degrees, including democratic and non-democratic governments. YouTube and Gmail (both from Google), BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd, WikiLeaks, Twitter and Facebook have all been censored, at different times, in China, Iran, Egypt and other countries.

“The clampdown on online free speech and the roll-out of a multi-tiered blanket surveillance regime via the draconian IT Act and its associated rules in India is part of a global trend,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society. “Big brother tendencies with the government have found common cause with powerful rights-holders, who are keen to crack down on intellectual property rights infringements. This, combined with the dramatic growth of the surveillance industry, has resulted in civil liberties being undermined across the world for a variety of pretexts ranging from child porn, obscenity, hate speech, organized crime, terrorism and piracy.”

Transparency Report website—which logs content removal requests it receives from governments—the Internet company received 67 requests from the Indian government for the removal of 282 content items (such as videos critical of politicians) from YouTube and blogs during July-December 2010. Google said it complied with 22% of the requests. For the January-June 2011 (latest data available) period, Google received 68 content removal requests for 358 items from Indian government agencies. Google complied in 51% cases.

Entangling the user

Even as they face pressure from governments, companies such as Google and Facebook are tweaking their policies to allow for sharing of user data across multiple product offerings. They claim it will give their users a more “intuitive” experience, but advocacy groups say the policies are being altered to give advertisers more bang for the buck at the expense of user privacy.

Google, for instance, is making changes to its privacy policies and terms of service, which take effect from 1 March. “Regulators globally have been calling for shorter, simpler privacy policies—and having one policy covering many different products is now fairly standard across the Web,” said Alma Whitten, Google’s director of privacy, product and engineering, on the official company blog. Google has begun notifying users of these changes since 24 January.

For example, a search for restaurants in Mumbai may throw up Google+ posts or photos that people have shared with other users, or that are in their albums. Usability can be enhanced, for instance, by allowing memos from Google Docs to be read in Gmail, or adding a Gmail contact to a meeting in Google Calendar. Google, according to Whitten, does not sell personal information nor share it externally without permission “except in very limited circumstances like a valid court order”.

Facebook, on its part, introduced its “Timeline” feature in December, which digs up a user’s past and displays it, but does not allow opting out of the service. The feature is being introduced for all 800 million users, around 40 million of whom are in India. Those not accustomed to checking their privacy settings will have a hard time going through the hundreds of messages they’ve posted over the last few years (Facebook was founded in 2004).

The Electronic Privacy Information Center said the launch of Timeline forces more privacy setting changes on Facebook users, “which flies in the face of both privacy and a settlement reached between the firm and the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC)”. On 29 November, Facebook agreed to an FTC order that bars it from “deceiving” consumers about privacy practices and requires it to submit to monitoring for 20 years.

“Privacy is certainly a very serious concern for Internet users. Some of the big brands like Facebook and Google simply have access to too much information about the life of their users, and this information could easily be misused by the brand or wilfully by someone else. Our guidance to consumers and clients is that first and foremost, they should be very conscious of these privacy challenges. If we put out any communication on a social network, it is akin to broadcast communication. By default, choose the tightest privacy setting and then gradually loosen up instead of accepting the default privacy setting of Facebook or Google. Don’t give out information like cellphone number, date of birth...or even names of close relations on social networks,” said Hareesh Tibrewala, joint chief executive officer of Social Wavelength, a company that advises clients on social media strategies.

Mahesh Murthy, founder of digital marketing firm Pinstorm, acknowledged that “in reality, there is virtually no privacy online. Governments and companies try to assure apprehensive citizens about privacy, while at the same time doing everything to destroy it in reality”.

He advises marketers to be upfront about their data collection and management policies, and declare them prominently on their online properties. On an individual level, Murthy takes comfort “in the fact that I could just be one of those 3 billion+ Internet users worldwide with my data a small part of the swarm out there that no one might take a special interest in”.

Electronic police state?

India has a history of exerting pressure on companies for access to communications data. According to Cryptohippie Inc., a provider of communication security services, India ranked 26 among the most policed states in the world in 2010—“one in which every surveillance camera recording, every email sent, every Internet site surfed, every post made, every check written, every credit card swipe, every cellphone ping…are all criminal evidence, and all are held in searchable databases”, according to the company that discontinued the report in 2011, stating that “…most people are defending their ignorance; not much good will come from us repeating ourselves”.

Currently, the Indian Telegraph Act and the IT Act, 2008 (amendments introduced in the IT Act, 2000), give the government the power to monitor, intercept and even block online conversations and websites. Moreover, under section 79 of the IT Intermediary (Rules and Guidelines), 2011, intermediaries—telcos, Internet services providers, network services providers, search engines, cyber cafes, Web-hosting companies, online auction portals and online payment sites—are mandated to exercise “due diligence” and advise users not to share/distribute information violative of the law or a person’s privacy and rights. Intermediaries are expected to act on a complaint within 36 hours of receiving it, and remove such content when warranted. In case the intermediary doesn’t find the content objectionable, the matter will have to be contested in a court of law.

“The Indian government can, and should, monitor conversations and websites if it believes the content can harm the security, defence, sovereignty and integrity of the country,” maintained Pavan Duggal, a Supreme Court lawyer and a cyberlaw expert, but wondered how it would go about implementing the task of monitoring conversation on an unstructured Internet. “The intention is good, but the path is not clear,” said Duggal, who envisions a lot of cases being filed against misuse of these laws.

“While the affected party can lodge a complaint with the intermediary, removal has to follow a due process, which should include suitable documentary evidence placed by the party. There should be a process of examination through an ombudsman, a process of arbitration where the request is disputed or a court order as may be required on a case to case basis,” said Vijayashankar of the Cyber Society of India.

The original was published in Livemint on 3 February 2012. Sunil Abraham was quoted in it.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/privacy-speech-at-stake-in-cyberspace-1

Freedom of Expression in Community Media and on the Internet Understanding Connections, Finding Common Ground

praskrishna — 2012-02-03T11:00:31Z

A meeting co-organised by the Internet Democracy Project (Delhi) and Maraa (Bangalore) with the support of the Community Radio Forum in New Delhi on 3 February 2012. Pranesh Prakash is participating in this event.

Access to FM radio and broadband Internet access have proliferated since the 90s. Since 2006, community radio has been licensed to community and educational initiatives. Today there are more than 150 community radio stations which are operational, reaching some of the most underserved communities in India. Further, Internet penetration is about 8-10%, reaching about 100 million people. Both these media are on the verge of a paradigm shift.

Due to ever-increasing convergence and the ubiquity of digital communication platforms and mobile telephony, community radio stations will be able to reach not just deeper but wider. The emergence of indigenous fonts and Internet on wireless mobile technologies will mean that the next few hundred million people will begin using the Internet. Both of these phenomena are positive developments signalling possibilities of greater democratisation of media and media for the democratisation of India at multiple levels. However, there are significant issues which threaten to
impede the free growth of these platforms - troubling as it is, the threats are related to barriers on freedom of expression.

While radio still faces a ban on the broadcast of news and current affairs, opaque spectrum allocation, the imposition of a government content code and pressure to self-regulate, the Internet on the other hand has seen tumultuous developments through 2011 and early this year as well. Both the government and the judiciary have shown scant respect for and confidence in their own people, choosing instead to regulate the free flow of information citing communal sensitivities, minority population, objectionable content, etc.

This meeting aims to bring together advocates and practitioners from both the community radio and the Internet communities, to discuss what restrictions there are on freedom of expression, through law and policy; what commonalities there are between the two platforms; and what the areas and mechanisms are through and in which these two groups can work together in the future to engage policy and legal frameworks so that people's constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression is upheld in letter and in spirit.

The meeting invites about 15 participants from both community radio and Internet circles, from across the country. The meeting will be held between 10:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. on 3 February 2012 and will take place at the UNESCO Office, B-5/29, Safdarjang Enclave, New Delhi 110029.

Agenda

10.00-10.30 a.m.	Welcome and Introductions Anja Kovacs and Ram Bhat
10.30-11.15 a.m.	Community Radio and Freedom of Expression Sajan Venniyoor Moderated by Ashish Sen
11.15-11.30 a.m.	Tea Break
11.30 a.m.-12.15 p.m.	The Internet and Freedom of Expression Anja Kovacs Moderated by Ashish Sen
12.15-13.30 p.m.	Freedom of Expression in Community Media and on the Internet: Overlaps and Common Issues Group Discussion, moderated by Ram Bhat
13.30-14.30 p.m.	Lunch
14.30-15.15 p.m.	Joint priorities for community media and Internet activists Group Discussion, moderated by Siddharth Narrain
15.15-15.30 p.m.	Tea Break
15.30-16.15 p.m.	Taking it Forward – Plan of Action Group Discussion, moderated by Anja Kovacs
16.15-16.45 p.m.	Thanks and Wrap-up Ram Bhat and Anja Kovacs

List of Participants

Anja Kovacs – Internet Democracy Project
Arti Jaiman – Gurgaon ki Awaaz and CRF
Ashish Sen – AMARC Asia Pacific and CRF
Debarun Dutta - Drishti
Geeta Seshu – the Hoot
Hemant Babu – Nomad India and CRF
Mir Ubaid – the Hoot
N Ramakrishna – Ideosync Media
Parminder Jeet Singh – IT for Change
Pranesh Prakash – Centre for Internet and Society
Ram Bhat – Maraa
Sajan Venniyoor - CRF
Sapna Shahani - WAVE (Women Aloud Videoblogging for Empowerment)
Siddharth Narrain – Alternative Law Forum
Srinivasan Ramani – Newsclick.in

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/freedom-of-expression-in-community-media-and-on-the-internet-understanding-connections-finding-common-ground

Google move is not good for netizens, say experts

praskrishna — 2012-02-03T10:03:17Z

Google's plan to merge data across 60 of its properties, which was announced last week, has drawn criticism from experts on the Internet, who are saying that this is detrimental to privacy. Balaji Narasimhan wrote this in the Hindu Business Line. The article was published on 31 January 2012.

"Google is doing what is good for shareholders. This is not positive for netizens,” said Mr Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society. “People like you and me have to either accept it or leave."

But what are the alternatives? Mr Somick Goswami, Director Consulting, PwC India, didn't want to comment directly on Google, but in the larger context of data privacy, he asked, "Do users want a free Internet or control over content? There is a lot of advocacy going around it. End of the day, when using the Internet, there has to be trust."

One way that Google could build trust could be by using something pertaining to loyalty, which retailers use in the real world in order to woo customers.

Mr Ram Menon, Executive Vice-President and Chief Technology Officer of Tibco, said that many of his clients make offers that are in context with what users want.

"For example, if you like cappuccino and this knowledge is known to a vendor, he can offer you a cappuccino when you walk past the store." He said that in such cases, there was no affront to privacy because the offer is relevant and in context. "You are a member and have opted in," he said.

Perhaps, the fact that all of Google's services are free has something to do with the privacy issue, pointed out the Australian Privacy Foundation. As its site privacy.org.au noted, "The company's business model is based on advertising revenue. Users pay no fees for their use of the services."

And the merger of its 60 policies apart, there is another issue worrying users — new acquisitions. As Mr Abraham pointed out, “When I was browsing Silk Smitha before YouTube was acquired by Google, I had no idea that one day this information would be known to Google."

And the issue becomes more serious in the context of a growing mobile workforce. As the Australian Privacy Foundation said, "Android mobile phones effectively trap users into having a Google user account."

Using Google services on a mobile – especially Google Latitude, a service that allows you to enable your friends to view your current location – allows Google to track your movements.

And since Google is predominantly an advertising-driven company, it could be argued that one day they might share information about you with a third party, enabling them to market to you more effectively, though this may not necessarily be done with your explicit permission – and this means that you may get an offer for products even if you have not opted in for such a service.

What can be done? Mr Abraham rued the fact that there are no specific laws to safeguard users.

"India needs privacy laws. In the US, law makers will create a fuss. In India, we are at the mercy of companies."

The original was published in the Hindu Business Line. Sunil Abraham is quoted in this article.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/google-move-is-not-good-for-netizens-say-experts

Summary of the Minutes of the Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics

praskrishna — 2012-01-30T16:24:40Z

The Western Ghats Portal team had organized a one-day workshop to explore the contemporary state of biodiversity informatics as expressed in three spheres: technology behind biodiversity informatics, scientific commons and policy and biodiversity portals in India. It hoped to provide an opportunity to interact and learn from similar endeavors in this emerging discipline. The workshop was held at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE), Bangalore on 25 November 2011.

There were 5 speakers and 10 panelists representing as many portal initiatives, participating at the venue or via WebEx, addressing an audience of 75 comprising of students, researchers, representatives from governmental bodies and technological platforms.The entire day’s sessions were peppered with questions and discussions, directed to the presenters as also within the members of the audience.

The technology session presented an Indian initiative, Bhuvan, a geospatial data alternative to GoogleEarth that was pertinent to the India centric audience. The second presentation was the Atlas of Living Australia, an international endeavor that was able to give a broad overview of how government funding for the sharing of government data on a public platform was able to source large information and present it for open access on a portal. The project aims to serve a variety of users from scientists, citizen scientists to policy makers and activists in biodiversity and conservation. The WGP was presented by a discussion of architecture and design of participation interface for recording and accumulating biodiversity observation data. The scientific commons and policy session covered a wide range of topics: the interpretation of the Indian laws for portal developments across disciplines, the governmental policies that may hinder the development of Open source platforms, the creative commons licenses and how they work for scientific data, and whether developing a biodiversity commons would help the community at large.

Global initiatives in the area of scientific commons were presented. Views from the participants on various aspects and the practicality of a legal framework were discussed. There are plans to discuss and evolve a draft of a charter for scientific commons that would be relevant for biodiversity and conservation. A clearly articulated and agreed data policy is also one of the deliverables of the project.

The third session centred on the experience of India-centric biodiversity portals. Two of the panelists presented their portals and attended the session over WebEx from the United States. A spectrum of portals was presented. Some of them were focused on single taxa, or a theme focus from medicinal plants to thematic citizen science initiatives. The IBP and WGP were presented as broad based with large collections of spatial data and species data. Perspective plans of large biodiversity portal initiatives, like the GBIF node for India, INBIF, were outlines to showing the things that may come in the next few years.

The discussions revolved around scientific rigor versus citizen participation, large-scale projects v/s small-scale focused portals, and maintaining quality with crowd sourced data. Ideas about how peer recognition and scientific status could be achieved were discussed. Focused portals closely managed by experts to provide valuate biodiversity and species data were discussed, with methods of maintaining quality and curating data. The event concluded by discussions of how each portal can maintain its identity and focus but at the same time evolve mechanisms for interoperability and exchange of information. There were open discussions on whether we can network and provide easy toolkits for building focused participation sites.

Minutes of the Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics

Objectives of the Workshop

Over the last few years, Biodiversity Informatics has emerged as a field to aggregate and consolidate biodiversity information across the world. With the increased penetration of the Internet into developing economies, and the widespread adoption of web technologies, biodiversity informatics has spawned an impressive variety of initiatives. These initiatives range from global knowledge bases and networks, national initiatives, eco-region based initiatives, as well as sharply focused initiatives which address a single species or event. There have been tangible advantages for stakeholders from these initiatives which has inspired many other endeavors. Success stories exist at both global and local level, and learning from these experiences can help one understand the multi-faceted nature of this discipline.

The Western Ghats Portal team organized a one-day workshop to explore the contemporary state of biodiversity informatics as expressed in three spheres: i) technology behind biodiversity informatics, ii) scientific commons and policy and iii) biodiversity portals in India. The workshop was intended to bring together technologists, open data policy experts, leaders of portal initiatives and user groups and stakeholders to meet and discuss experiences and approaches to Biodiversity Informatics.

Seventy five participants attended the workshop covering governmental agencies, NGO’s, academic institutes, student groups, CEPF grantees and other relevant stakeholders. There were 5 speakers and 10 panelists representing as many portal initiatives, participating at the venue or via WebEx from the continents of Australia and North America.

Plenary I: Technology behind biodiversity informatics - 0930 - 1115 hrs

This session was introduced by Dr.B.Ramesh of the French Institute of Pondicherry, who welcomed the participants of the workshop. He highlighted the growth of Biodiversity Informatics leveraging the Internet. In this emerging discipline, stressed the need to take stock of the latest developments in the area.

Development of Information System, Open Data standards, Archive and Geospatial solutions, Visualization in Bhuvan - M. Arulraj, National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).

Arulraj gave an overview of the Bhuvan project, ISRO’s geo-portal serving as a rich geteway to Indian earth observations. The project was launched in August 2009 and has made rapid strides since then to expose earth observation images and thematic maps on the Indian sub-continent. The Bhuvan project has multiple modules, which include 3-D and 2-D visualizations; a data archive and data download; thematic land use and land cover maps; a mobile application; and a discussion forum. The project is in active development and in beta, but is adding many features and data to the portal. In addition to data dissemination it provides a webGIS platform with the ability to do analyses and create geographical layers by users. The Bhuvan portal conforms to the national map policy while exposing spatial information and imagery through its evolving portal.

Arulraj explained the architecture of the portal and surveyed the webGIS and open source technologies that were available. A demo terminal of Bhuvan was exposed during the lunch session. During the discussions on map policy, Arulraj quoted that as per Remote Sensing Data Policy (RSDP)-2011, all satellite data of resolutions up to 1 m shall be distributed on a nondiscriminatory basis and on “as requested basis” by NRSC/ISRO.

Architecture and design of participation interfaces - Anand Janakiraman, Western Ghats Portal

Anand Janakiram spoke about the design of participation interfaces for the Western Ghats portal. The intent was to engage with user groups on the user interfaces and usability of an observation interface, where users will be able to upload a multi-media object; provide a location for the observation; make a species call with a certain level of confidence; and provide notes and comments on the observation. The observation will be rated by the crowd. Species calls could be changed if necessary and agreed or disagreed upon.

Various rating systems were discussed. These included a 5 or ten star rating system, like movie rating systems; a multi-dimensional rating system like in Wikipedia; a “like” rating system that is used in many sites; and an expert based rating system. There was a lot of discussion on rating systems among the participants concerning the necessity of an expert based system; the wisdom of the public in identifications; a simple and easy to use rating system on the portal.

Challenges on the emerging discipline of Biodiversity Informatics - Donald Hobern, Atlas of Living Australia - Web participation.

Donald Hobern participated in the session from Australia over the Internet. His talk and presentation was viewed by the participants via two-way WebEx where he answered questions and interacted with the audience.

Donald presented the Australian Government supported multi-institutional project called the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA). The ALA is a multi-institutional project with large funding to build a comprehensive biodiversity site focused on Australia. The conceptual model for the portal is to build a platform that will aggregate biodiversity information resources from specimen records, field observations, literature, images, experts and amateurs. The information will be integrated as species pages, distributions, regional atlases, and nomenclature. Through this, the portal aims to serve a whole range of users ranging from researchers, taxonomists, land-use planners, and conservation and park managers.

Donald explained the typical specimen, field occurrence and occurrence data and how it is the data is presented via collections. He also explained the services to manage sensitive data and name services available to the public through APIs. The ALA also has rich mapping tools that help relate biodiversity to spatial parameters like rainfall, temperature and other abiotic and biotic factors.

ALA also develops user communities among various stakeholders that include resource management groups, conservation groups, ecological researchers, environmental agencies, field naturalists and taxonomy researchers. They also develop specific use cases and applications for each of these groups.

The questions and interaction session was animated, even though it was on the Internet. One of the issues raised was that the ALA seems to be building an all encompassing and comprehensive portal, without any particular focus theme or focus group. How was the planning of features and functions being done? Donald’s response was the portal team would build functions that they thought would be useful and then engage with user groups to better and fine-tune the application. They engage with user groups about functions on the portal.

The Western Ghats Portal team would like to thank Donald Hobern for his active participation in the workshop with a valued presentation on the state-of-the-art of a comprehensive biodiversity portal.

Plenary II: Scientific commons and policy - 1130 - 1300 hrs

The session was chaired by Dr. Ravi Chellam of the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust. Ravi introduced the session and the speakers. The idea was to generate discussions on data sharing policy among the participants in the context of the Indian legal framework of map policy, biodiversity act, intellectual property, scientific creative commons, and the culture and attitude of Indian scientists. Ravi suggested that the session should lead to further discussions to evolve a policy for data sharing among biodiversity and conservation researchers and to evolve a charter for the best practices among the community.

Commons in the context of Biodiversity Information - Danish Sheikh, Alternative Law Forum

Danish Sheikh from the Alternate Law Forum (ALF) discussed the creative commons and stressed that it maintains the copyright of the contributor. Creative Commons only specifies the terms of sharing the information and in today’s Internet driven world open access to information was essential. With a complex legal framework of creative commons, map policy, biodiversity act, and research interests of individuals, for sharing biodiversity data we must consider property versus propriety. The sharing of information on the portal must be seen from the non-commercial and academic nature of the information as well as the use of data for social good of conservation. Government data in the form of maps and reports should be sharable on an artistic license and they could be deployed on the portal. In the sharing of biodiversity information, there are no concrete cases of violations of laws and thus there are no examples to learn from.

Danish Sheikh had prepared a draft of declaration to be discussed and agreed upon by the community. This was to be circulated to the participants, comments solicited and a broad consensus evolved on the best practices for sharing biodiversity information. The discussions centered on the map policy and the need to carefully study the map policy and the biodiversity act from a legal perspective and arrive at a policy for the portal that will conform to the laws and acts in India.

Open data in the scientific realm - Sunil Abraham, Centre for Internet and Society

Sunil Abraham from the Center for Internet and Society (CIS) spoke on various national and international initiatives on open data in the scientific realm. National consultations and discussions have been going on towards evolving a National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) among scientists and researchers in the country. The principle of the policy is based on openness, flexibility, transparency, legal conformity, protection of intellectual property, formal responsibility, and professionalism. Based on these principles, various definitions have evolved. He stressed upon a clear articulation of non-sharable data in the negative list based upon the legal framework and Right to Information Act; restricted access data and open access data.

Sunil Abraham also discussed various international initiatives on scientific data sharing especially in the ecology and biodiversity realm. He spoke of the Eye on Earth initiative for evolving a sharing policy, the framework of the Shared European Environment Information System (SEIS) and various standards for data sharing.

Discussions were around the issues of motivations for data sharing and building social networks and peer encouragement for data sharing. He opined that there was no recipe for engaging the crowd towards building and participating on social networks and sharing information.

Sunil also suggested that the community should evolve a best practices policy document by discussions and debates among themselves. CIS should be seen as a service provider and advocate for evolving a shared policy and lobbying with government if necessary. But the biodiversity community should provide the lead in this effort and the CIS would only be advisory.

Plenary III - Biodiversity portals in India - 1400 - 1700 hrs

The session was moderated by MD Madhusudan of the Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore. Over the last few years there has been a multitude of portals focused on aggregating and publishing biodiversity information of the Indian sub-continent. Some of these portals are focused upon a region or taxa or subject of interest and some portals address a wider canvas of issues on biodiversity and conservation. The session was focused on presentations by each of the portals, presenting the key features and focus of their portals; the experience of building and running the portals; key lessons learnt and future plans for the portal.

The response for the sessions on biodiversity was enthusiastic. Over 12 portal initiatives were presented. Some of the presentations were by participants in the United States, who run portals on India. The presentations and participation was done over WebEx sessions overcoming the challenge of different time zones.

Madhusudhan moderated the session, keeping focus, and allowing time for discussions and debates.

V.B Mathur, Indian Biodiversity Information Facility (InBIF)

VB Mathur presented plans for a GBIF node to be set up in India at the Wildlife Institute of India called Indian Biodiversity Facility (InBIF). The project is just being initiated and is conceived as a broad and participative initiative to address the challenges to conservation in the 21st century India. With a growing economy, the objective is to provide biodiversity information to build sustainable development for larger and inclusive populations of India. The InBIF has developed a vision and mission statement and will produce a concept paper by a consultative process by next year 2012. InBIF recognizes that such an inclusive biodiversity portal will require significant funding and the involvement of already present biodiversity portals. InBIF proposes to seek substantial funding based on the concept paper via the 12th Five-Year-Plan period starting 2012-2013.

Suhel Quader, Season Watch (http://www.seasonwatch.in), Migrant Watch (http://www.migrantwatch.in)

Suhel Quader presented two portals Seasons Watch and Migrant Watch focused on citizen science initiatives. The Seasons Watch portal is focused on the observation and recording of seasons as revealed by trees, by their fruiting, flowering and leaf fall patterns. About 100 species are observed all over the country. Migrant Watch observes the arrival and departure of migrant bird species across the sub-continent. Both these large citizen science efforts are focused on the recording and understanding of seasons to create a base-line of data on seasons and their variations. These sites are driven by questions and hypotheses. The sites have an active citizen participation. The portals are planning to expand significantly into school networks. The data generated by citizens are freely available on the portals and it encourages others to download, explore, analyze and publish analysis on the data accumulated on the portal.

Sanjay Molur, Pterocount (http://www.pterocount.org/)

Sanjay Molur presented Pterocount a South Asian bat monitoring program. The project is aimed at creating awareness about bat conservation issues and developing data on the status of South Asian bat populations. There are about 3500 species of bats and data on the bat roosts and their populations is collected through online portals as well as offline forms. The information from all these sites will be compiled and analyzed for trends in the population of bats, to identify key threats to roosts and to provide recommendations for their conservation. The data collected is contributed to the IUCN and is shared with other researchers under creative commons licenses. The study is currently focused on a single bat species Pteropus giganteus, but plans to expand to other bat species as well.

Suma Tagadur, Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions (http://envis.frlht.org)

Sathya Sangeetha presented the medicinal plants’ envis site maintained by the Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions. The site is focused on the development of a database for medicinal plants with details of taxonomy, local names, status, distribution and trade. The site undertakes a systematic update for 12 medicinal plants per year. They also study the conservation status of medicinal plants and help in the identification of a plant red list. They have plans to develop a children’s portal for increasing awareness of medicinal plants among children. With a focused agenda, the site has a specific and valuable role in biodiversity and conservation of India.

Ramesh BR - Western Ghats Portal (http://www.thewesternghats.in/)

BR Ramesh presented the Western Ghats Portal. This is a relatively young initiative launched about six months ago building on the India Biodiversity Portal. The focus of the portal is to collect biodiversity and conservation information on the Western Ghats, a biodiversity hotspot. The portal has a map module, a species pages module, a collaborative module and integrative theme pages. The portal has aggregated significant available data on the Western Ghats and deployed it on the portal. The portal plans to add an observation recording interface and campaign for large scale participation on the portal, and species identification keys.

Shwetank Verma, Biodiversity of India, formerly Project Brahma (http://www.biodiversityofindia.org)

Shwetank Verma presented the Biodiversity of India Portal. The portal is developed and managed completely by voluntary effort, and is aimed at being a wiki resource on the biodiversity of India. The site aggregates data on Indian biodiversity from various public sites and presents it attractively on the portal. It has an effective search engine LigerCat that helps index all information on the portal. It aims to add and enrich information on the human and cultural aspects of species and their uses. The portal is keen on networking and sharing information with other biodiversity sites by building necessary APIs for interactions between various biodiversity sites.

Krushnamegh Kunte, ifoundbutterflies (http://ifoundbutterflies.org/) web participation

Krushnamegh Kunte presented the ifoundbutterfiles portal over a WebEx session from the United States. ifoundbutterflies is a community site on the butterflies of India. It contains information on species pages, life cycle pages, photographs, and identification keys of over 600 species of butterflies in India. All information is carefully peer review and curated a team of biologists studying and researching butterflies. The data is assuredly authenticated and verified and will form a reliable source of butterfly information on India.

Vijay Barve, DiversityIndia (http://diversityindia.org/) web participation

Vijay Barve presented the DiversityIndia, a social network group over a WebEx session from the United States. The effort started off as a yahoo group and then moved to facebook as a more convenient platform to share information on the biodiversity of India. It plans to aggregate the information posted in these groups into a site that will maintain and develop biodiversity databases. The group is open to sharing information and resources with other portals working on the biodiversity of India.

Deepak Menon, India Water Portal (http://www.indiawaterportal.org/)

Samuel Rajkumar presented the India Water Portal. Their portal is supported by campaigning for participation and awareness among various fora on water resources. The features include a question bank and an interaction with experts on water; a data repository on water; and a children’s section. The portal is currently working on a data project aimed at accumulating a large repository of water related data on the portal for open access. The portal intends on expanding with a map component and a data visualization module.

Chitra Ravi, India Biodiversity Portal (http://indiabiodiversity.org/)

Chitra Ravi presented the India Biodiversity Portal. The portal was started in 2008 after the first phase of portal development. Over the past year, the portal has been enriched with checklists and species pages. The portal is closely integrated with the Western Ghats Portal sharing the platform, its features and the data. A comparison of the availability of data in EOL showed that for the lesser known flora and fauna, there is very little information publicly available. The portal expects to fill this gap, by generating rich species and distribution content for Indian species.

M.D. Madhusudhan, Status of Golden Jackals in India

MD Madhusudhan presented a focused and time-based project on the Golden Jackals on India. The site campaigned and crowd sourced on the current and historical occurrence of the golden jackal in India. The enthusiasm for participation was evident with large data collection. The data was analyzed and made available publicly and freely to whoever wanted to use the data. There was a need felt for a generic portal to support such focused time-based crowd sourcing and citizen science efforts.

K.Sankara Rao, Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc

K Sankara Rao, presented the Center for Ecological Sciences’ creation of a virtual herbarium database from the rich herbarium available at the Institute. The herbarium is Father Saldhana’s collection on the flora of Karnataka and has the best representation of plant specimens of Karnataka. The effort to digitize the herbarium is a passionate project that will make the herbarium resources to be more widely available. Sankara Rao requested volunteers to come forward and work on the project.

Discussions and summary of the day:

The discussions centered on a range of topics and concerns for Biodiversity Informatics in India. They focused on the following themes:

Large and comprehensive portals versus narrow and focused portals. While focused portals seem efficient in achieving their objectives, large portals are trying to explore different mechanisms of harnessing and disseminating information. While such large and comprehensive portals are necessary, they will require larger efforts, longer periods and significant funding to deliver useful content in biodiversity.

Participation and Quality. There were different views on crowd sourcing information and validation mechanisms. The importance of expert-driven efforts on ensuring quality was appreciated, while there was recognition that amateur naturalists and hobbyists could be very knowledgeable and reliable.

The scientific status of a portal can be enhanced with careful expert driven peer review mechanism. Portals could also serve as repositories for data papers publications and citations that would be valued by the scientific community. Target users for the portal. Discussions on target users for the portal covered the whole spectrum from specialists and scientists to activists and concerned citizens. A biodiversity portal was expected to provide information to a variety of users and stakeholders, including managers and policy makers.

Data exchange between portals: There was a general consensus on the interaction and exchange of data among portals. This was heartening to note, but since all the portals are new and evolving, mechanisms of exchange and building APIs for exchange was lower in priority for most portals. However, all portals were open to sharing information. Many of the citizen science portals have made their data public and downloadable.

There were discussions on larger projects like the WGP to engage in technology facilitation for various citizen science projects. This was discussed and opportunities for such technology facilitation need to be explored.

Various mechanisms, such as quiz competitions, interaction with experts, bio-blitzes, campaigns and road shows; to involve and engage citizens on the portal were discussed. There were open-ended discussions on how each portal can maintain its identity and focus, but at the same time evolve mechanisms for interoperability and exchange of information, and on whether we can network and provide easy tool kits for building focused participation sites.

Dr. Prabhakar, concluded the event with a thank you note and by expressing hope that the biodiversity conservation community can build together on the momentum the workshop has created.

List of participants present at the Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics, 25th November, 2011, ATREE, Bangalore

Sr.No	Name	Affiliation	Role
1	Abhisheka	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
2	Ajith Ashokan	Mar Athanasios College for Advanced Studies Tiruvalla (MACFAST), Kerala	Audience
3	Amruta	Research and Action in Natural Wealth Administration (RANWA)	Audience
4	Anand Janakiraman	Western Ghats Portal	Speaker
5	Aneesh A	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
6	Anup Prasad K S	TCS, Bangalore	Audience
7	Anuradha S	University of Maryland, College Park	Audience
8	Aravind N A	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
9	Asha.A	Centre for Ecological Sciences - Indian Institute of Science (IISc)	Audience
10	Ashwini H S	Kuvempu University	Audience
11	Avinash K S	Kuvempu University	Audience
12	Baiju Raj	Agra bear rescue facility	Audience
13	Balasubramanian D	French Institute of Pondicherry	Audience
14	Baranidharan.K	Forest College and Research Institute	Audience
15	Chitra Ravi	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Panelist
16	Danish Sheikh	Alternate Law Forum	Speaker
17	Deepak Menon	ARGHYAM	Panelist
18	Devayani Khare	French Institute of Pondicherry	Audience
19	Dharnidharan	French Institute of Pondicherry	Audience
20	Dinesh T B	Servelots Infotech Pvt. ltd	Audience
21	Dr. B R Ramesh	French Institute of Pondicherry	Panelist
22	Dr. Bhaskar Acharya	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
23	Dr. Chikkaswamy	Om Bioscience Research	Audience
24	Dr. Easa	Asia Biodiversity Conservation Trust (ABCT)	Audience
25	Dr. Gautam Talukdar	Wildlife Institute of India	Audience
26	Dr. Gladwin Joseph	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
27	Dr. Jagdish Krishnaswamy	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
28	Dr. K N Ganeshaiah	University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore	Panelist
29	Dr. Karthikeyan Vasudevan	Wildlife Institute of India	Audience
30	Dr. L Shashikumar	Jnana Bharathi, Bangalore University	Audience
31	Dr. M H Swaminath	Addl. Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildife)	Audience
32	Dr. M Sanjappa	Botanical Survey of India(BSI)	Audience
33	Dr. N S Hallikhed	BISB	Audience
34	Dr. R Sukumar	Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES), IISc	Audience
35	Dr. Ravi Chellam	Madras Crocodile Bank Trust	Speaker
36	Dr. V B Mathur	Wildlife Institute of India	Panelist
37	G Areendran	Wildlife Institute of India	Audience
38	G Muthu Sankar	French Institute of Pondicherry	Audience
39	Harinandanan P V	Mar Athanasios College for Advanced Studies Tiruvalla (MACFAST), Kerala	Audience
40	Jagadish	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
41	Jyotish M S	Mar Athanasios College for Advanced Studies Tiruvalla (MACFAST), Kerala	Audience
42	Kavitha A	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
43	Kiran M C	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
44	Krushnamegh Kunte	Harvard University	Panelist
45	M Arulraj	National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), Hyderabad	Speaker
46	M D Madhusudan	Nature Conservation Foundation	Audience
47	M Sathya Sangeetha	Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions	Audience
48	Madhura Niphadkar	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
49	Meganath V	Mar Athanasios College for Advanced Studies Tiruvalla (MACFAST), Kerala	Audience
50	Naveena N L	University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, Bangalore	Audience
51	Nishadh	Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History	Audience
52	Prashanth M B	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
53	Priti Gururaj	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
54	Prof. K Sankara Rao	Centre for Ecological Sciences - Indian Institute of Science (IISc)	Audience
55	R C Prasad	Spatial Informatics Lab, IIITHyderabad	Audience
56	Radhika Santhanam	Śramani	Audience
57	Rahul Yadava	Strand Life Sciences	Audience
58	Rajan Pilakandy	Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History	Audience
59	Rakesh K N	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
60	Ramesh Kannan	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
61	Ravikanth	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
62	Sabah Rubina	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
63	Samuel Rajkumar	Independent web-developer	Audience
64	Sangeetha Sathya	FRLTH-IAIM	Audience
65	Santosh S Gaikwad	Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History	Audience
66	Seena Narayanan K	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
67	Senthilkumar Umapathy	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
68	Shashank P R	University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, Bangalore	Audience
69	Shrinivas K R	Kuvempu University	Audience
70	Shwetank Verma	Indian Institute of Science (IISc)	Panelist
71	Sivarajan	French Institute of Pondicherry	Audience
72	Sreerupa Sen	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
73	Suhel Quader	National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS)
74	Suma Tagadur	Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions	Panelist
75	Sunil Abraham	Centre for Internet and Society	Speaker
76	Supriya K S	National Center for Biological Sciences	Audience
77	T Bala	Keystone Foundation - Flora of Nilgiri	Audience
78	Veeranagappa P	University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, Bangalore	Audience
79	Vidyadhar Atkore	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
80	Vijay Barve	Diversity India	Panelist

Also see Western Ghats Portal: Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/summary-of-the-minutes-of-the-workshop-on-biodiversity-informatics

Alternative Approaches to Social Change

praskrishna — 2012-01-30T06:04:23Z

Review of Maesy Angelina’s essay, "Digital Natives’ Alternative Approach to Social Change", in Digital Alternatives with a Cause Book 2: To Think, pp.64-76 by Nuraini Juliastuti.

Dominant assumptions about social movements need a redefinition. They are not compatible with youth movements, which are mainly operated within the framework of contemporary technology development.

Although being acknowledged as ‘the potential future directions of activism’, the capability of digital-based movements to bring about concrete changes has been in doubt. It has been associated with degrading terms such as ‘slacktivism’ or ‘click activist’. Some scholars consider it a quasi-movement, and argue that it needs to be accompanied with “real” activism.

Each movement calls for a different analytical lens. The source of predicaments of the digital movement opponents revolves around the persistence of focusing on concrete aspects of a movement. Unless we consider the tangible aspects, a proper understanding of a digital movement cannot be realized.

Observations about intangible aspects of a movement will keep a research from clinging to activism with a capital A, and start seeing a gradation in the social movement practices. It is constructive and opens the door to analyses of multi-dimensional movements such as the Blank Noise initiative (India). Drawing on methods of identifying new developments to the field of social movement, Maesy examines some aspects of it: the issue, strategy, site of action, and internal mode of organization.

First, a straightforward summary of Blank Noise. It is a movement to address sexual harassment against women in public spaces in India. Sexual harassment includes staring, catcalls, groping, and is usually disregarded as a one-off, casual incident. It also takes under purview ‘eve teasing’, generally considered soft sexual harassment. Established in 2003, the main workspaces of the collective are a combination of street interventions and online campaigns mediated on social media sites such as blogs, YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter.

Blank Noise attempts to subvert populist notions of what activism is within culture. Artistic approaches are regarded not as merely illustrational, but integrated into the methods of drawing attention to sexual harassment.

It chooses not to see things through a simple black and white perspective, but from a more complex view; loose, not rigid, is an instructive term to explain the character of the movement that is held together by two stakeholders: youth and technology.

In the antecedent period—this essay provides little space for it and hence lacks a historical explanation—social movements were carried out by non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The keyword ‘society empowerment’ was in application then; embedded within is the idea of power relations. The NGO activists are powerful agencies and therefore have the authority to empower others.

In the case of Blank Noise, it consciously disrupts the mainstream notion of what a social movement entails and at the same time, displays coherencies within the accepted movement’s principles: the collective thus offers alternative approaches. An alternative movement however, is indicative of a classic pattern within the trajectory of social movements - it is a natural occurrence in response to a static state of affairs. Negotiations of the appropriate ways to confront circumstances are accelerating, putting old concepts of voluntarism, political participation, social contribution, and the meaning of being an activist into fragile categorizations. They are all subject to constant reinterpretations.

A new question then arises: as local people acknowledge Blank Noise as an outstanding example of citizen activism in India, does this youth initiative differentiate itself from other youth movements of its kind?

Online spaces formerly built to showcase the profile of movement organizers have now transformed into collaborative workspaces to archive and advocate women’s right movement. Interactivity has permeated through online spaces, replacing the static nature which was earlier associated with activism-related websites. The distance between the initiators and the participants is disappearing. The initiators and the participants are no longer two separate entities and are now joint content producers.

Some literatures characterize a social movement as a form of intellectual intervention. It is the practice of social intervention where the power is arranged in a relatively clear intellectual hierarchy. The dynamics of the action spaces has blurred such a hierarchy. Nonetheless, the question of class is still worth asking.

The issues of the ideologies of technologies being used in a movement, how they are operated, the actors behind them, what discourses are being developed, whose interests do they speak on behalf of, are important matters to be further explored to bring forth a reflection on power dynamics.

An undemanding way to value a social movement is through impact examination. A common way to assess impact is by observing the tangible aspects of the movement or campaign: the number of participants in activities conducted (do men and women participate equally in them?); the number of meetings; the organization’s coverage; public response to the campaign; statistics of crime. It asserts that a significant impact can be achieved through concrete goals and demands.

The question of impact meets its philosophical turn when dealing with a grey issue such as normalization of street sexual violence. The meaning of street sexual violence is hard to pin down. One of the possible ways to cope with it is through a micro-movement. It is a strategy, which aims to create changes at the personal level. The meaning of empowerment is shifting. In the case of Blank Noise, as the author puts it, “they empower people through their experience with the collective”.

Blank Noise differs from other types of movements in their inability to identify the opponent. Or, rather, they live a situation where it is impossible to establish who and what the opponent is. Rather than merely seeing it as a representation of the faltering state, as many scholars usually do, the author sees it as a ‘grey productive gesture’. It directs the course of the movement to a constant dialogue with the meaning of participation. Often unintentionally, it engages in the search of the meaning of what one can contribute to the others, without having the need to incorporate in, or being absorbed into, old society empowerment jargon. It attempts to remake the language of a movement.

But how should an opponent be defined? And how should change be defined? Although indirectly, the discussion on ways of organizing the movement as well as articulating the issue—the uncertainty about their values included, points to the base of the debate on the concept of activism. As each context is walking its own social-technological life path, and the division between the debatable terms ‘quasi-activism’ and ‘real activism’ requires an elaborate explanation, what changes should social movements bring (and how ‘real’ should they be), is still a difficult question to answer.

Changes function both as the foundation and goal of the digital native movement. Much as they indicate hopefulness, changes often turn out to be grim and lead to frustrating facts. As alternative ways of social movements are developing and being performed in various contexts, in particular historical junctures many things remain the same. Instead of progress, a series of setbacks become apparent.

It is as if each new movement’s strategy would bring back the possibilities of reversals and stagnancies, putting causes and choices in question. It is not about the seemingly clear separation between decisiveness and indecisiveness. This is the time when being decisive offers clichéd, predictable acts, which are often twisted into an intense, conservative attitude. This is the time when being indecisive is promisingly progressive and demonstrating the signs of thinking critically. It may seem indefinite, but it provides spaces for resiliency, an important character to develop amid the chaotic situation.

Nuraini Juliastuti is the co-founder of KUNCI Cultural Studies Center (http://kunci.or.id/) established in 1999 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. She is currently a PhD student at Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands, focusing on popular music in Southeast Asia.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/media-coverage/alternative-approaches-to-social-change-1

Twitter’s Censorship Move Aimed at Regaining China?

praskrishna — 2012-01-30T04:54:51Z

Twitter, the popular social networking site for micro-blogging, has announced it is open to content censorship and region-based filtering, if required by law. The service boasts nearly 300 million users from across the world. Vinod Yalburgi writes this in the International Business Times.

In a Twitter post - "Tweets Must Still Flow", the service's management has stated: "Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country, while keeping it available in the rest of the world."

Twitter's drastic move comes in the wake of recent U.S. government allegations against Internet sites like Google, Yahoo and Facebook, regarding the need to regulate and filter controversial user-generated content. Both Google and Facebook have made similar commitments.

Like us on Facebook

However, it must be seen if either of the three do follow through with those commitments.

Meanwhile, experts quoted in a report by The Times of India, where too social networking Web sites are coming under the scanner, suggest the lack of clarity in laws in countries like India means Twitter can only act reactively; the situation in Germany or France, for example, where laws about pro-Nazi propaganda are codified, they can act proactively.

Another post by Twitter speaks of a new feature that will allow the site's administrators to enable region-based selective content blocking, thereby allowing region-sensitive information to remain hidden from users in those areas. The post also cited the example of Germany and France: "Some countries differ so much from our ideas that we will not be able to exist there. Others restrict certain types of content, such as France or Germany, which ban pro-Nazi content."

There is also speculation that one reason for this decision could be Twitter's plans to re-enter the Chinese market, where the micro-blogging service has been banned since 2009. Incidentally, China boasts the largest number of Internet users in the world, at this moment.

The hope, for Twitter, must be the promise to block sensitive tweets (or those the Chinese government deems offensive) without affecting the global audience. Twitter has rarely resorted to such censorship practices. However, the company does not seem unwilling to shy away from that responsibility.

"...if and when we are required to withhold a tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld," the company's statement said.

"The region-specific blocking was already being used on video hosting websites like Youtube and Hulu, where due to the wishes of copyright owners many videos are not available in India. Twitter is extending this technology to its tweets," said Pranesh Prakash at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India.

"We have to take care of the sensibilities of our people. Cultural ethos is very important to us," Kapil Sibal, the Indian Telecom Minister, said last month, during his request to both Google and Facebook to filter offensive content.

The trend of social networking Web sites resisting censorship seems a thing of the past. Prakash recalls an incident in 2011, when the U.S. government sought detailed information about a Twitter user, only to be challenged, by the Internet company, in court.

Read the original published by International Business Times on 28 January 2012. Pranesh Prakash was quoted in it.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/twitter2019s-censorship-move-aimed-at-regaining-china