Centre for Internet and Society

Internet Governance Plenary

praskrishna — 2012-10-01T14:14:07Z

Sunil Abraham was a panelist along with Ang Peng Hwa, Paul Wilson, Duangthip Chomprang and Raul Echeberria at this event organised by APNIC on August 28, 2012. Kuo Wei Wu, CEO, National Information Infrastructure Enterprise Promotion Association (NIIEPA) was the moderator.

Theme: What mechanism works better to resolve the issues?

Objectives:

To discuss relevant Internet Governance Forum (IGF) related issues for the APNIC community.
Update APNIC Members about the IGF process, including recent national and regional IGF initiatives, such as the APrIGF 2012 in Tokyo, Japan.
Prepare for the seventh Annual IGF Meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan from 6-9 November 2012.

Panelists

Ang Peng Hwa, Director of Singapore internet Research Centre (SiRC) Presentation Slides
Paul Wilson, Director General, APNIC and MAG Member, IGF
Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet Society, India
Duangthip Chomprang, Regional Affairs Manager, Internet Society
Raúl Echeberría, Executive Director/CEO, LACNIC and MAG Member, IGF

Click to read the Transcript
Watch the full video

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/conference-apnic-net-aug-28-2012-internet-governance-plenary

Internet Governance Forum: Participate Remotely

praskrishna — 2011-09-27T05:09:56Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) invites you to attend the sixth annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) as a remote participant from Bangalore. The IGF is being held in Nairobi from 27-30 September 2011. CIS has been registered as a remote IGF hub. This will allow many of us who are unable to attend the IGF in person. You can follow the discussion, watch the web cast of the event, follow real-time closed captioning and participate live (via text or video) that will be answered by panelists in the IGF.

The IGF is a multi-stakeholder forum that addresses public policy issues related to key elements of Internet governance. The overall theme of the meeting will be ‘Internet as a Catalyst for Change: Access, Development, Freedoms and Innovation'. The various themes are as follows:

Internet Governance for Development
Emerging Issues
Managing Critical Internet Resources
Security, Openness and Privacy
Access and Diversity
Taking Stock and the Way Forward

Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of the Centre for Internet and Society, will be participating in the following workshops:

Shyam Ponappa, Fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society, will be presenting remotely for the following workshop:

Open Spectrum for Development in the Context of the Digital Migration

Nishant Shah, Director Research at Centre for Internet and Society, has organized the following workshop:

Use of Digital Technologies for Civic Engagement and Political Change: Lessons Learned and Way Forward

We are not limited to following specific workshops. Please follow the link for more information on workshops of your interest, program details and the schedule:

http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/schedule-a-programme-2011

Participation is free. However, we would be grateful if you could confirm your attendance by emailing Natasha Vaz “natasha@cis-india.org or Tom Dane at “tjdane@gmail.com”. We hope you will join us to watch the web cast and contribute your own insights on the various workshops.

Looking forward to welcoming you at the workshops!

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/igf-remote-participation

Internet Governance Forum Poster

praskrishna — 2013-09-24T09:35:20Z

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

Internet Governance Forum

praskrishna — 2013-06-03T09:28:57Z

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

Internet Governance and India: The Way Forward

praskrishna — 2014-02-03T10:33:53Z

Snehashish Ghosh is participating in this event organized by the Observer Research Foundation on January 22 in New Delhi.

The Internet Governance Forum’s (IGF) purpose is to support the United Nations Secretary-General in carrying out the mandate from the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) with regard to convening a new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue. The eighth edition of the Internet Governance Forum started on October 22, in Bali, Indonesia. Representatives of governments, intergovernmental organisations, private sector, technical and academic community and civil society gathered together to discuss Internet governance related issues, under the general theme of “Building Bridges – Enhancing Multistakeholder Cooperation for Growth and Sustainable Development”. Cybersecurity, open internet, freedom of expression, protection of human rights were some of the topics discussed and debated at the three day conference. There was also a mutual consensus amongst the participants on the multistakeholder model for internet governance.

Programme

10.30: Registration/Tea
11.00: Opening Remarks by Mahima Kaul, Fellow-ORF
11.10: Subi Chaturvedi, Assistant Professor Journalism & Communication, Lady Shri Ram College for Women & Founder Trustee Media For Change
11.25: Dr. Anja Kovacs, Director, Internet Democracy Project, New Delhi.
11.40: Dr. Govind, CEO, National Internet Exchange of India, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India.
11.55: Virat Bhatia, Chairman, FICCI Communications & Digital Economy Committee and President, IEA AT&T, SouthAsia
12.10: Question and Answer
12.50: Concluding remarks
13.00: Lunch, ORF Lounge.

Speakers Biography

Subi Chaturvedi, Asstt. Professor Journalism & Communication, Lady Shri Ram College for Women & Founder Trustee Media For Change.

Ms. Chaturvedi strives to promote the role and participation of the youth, women and girls in ICT and the policy dialogue and decision making, along with Improving e-governance and deepening democracy through 'media for change'. She also works on building bridges between different stakeholders in IG and enabling conversations on the national and domestic level on important policy concerns such as cybersecurity, openness, universality, human rights, permission less innovation and freedom of speech and expression online, through roundtables, workshops, public hearings and youth meets (Internet Dialogues) for India.

She also actively participates in domestic as well as International meetings on Internet governance and enhanced cooperation to represent her stakeholder perspective, especially as a women academician and a member of the media and civil society from a developing country and an emerging economy. She often writes opinion and edits pieces for national dailies, journals and provides inputs and commentary to the electronic media to inform the debate and dialogue on Internet Governance policy questions

Dr. Anja Kovacs, Director, Internet Democracy Project, Delhi
Dr. Anja Kovacs directs the Internet Democracy Project, Delhi, where her work focuses on questions regarding freedom of expression, cybersecurity and the architecture of Internet governance as they relate to the Internet and democracy. She is currently also a member of the of the Investment Committee of the Digital Defenders Partnership and of the interim Steering Group of Best Bits, a global network of civil society members. In addition, Anja has worked as an international consultant on Internet issues, including for the United Nations Development Programme Asia Pacific and the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Mr. Frank La Rue, and has been an IREX Fellow and a Fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore. Prior to focusing her work on the information society, Anja researched, lectured and consulted on a wide range of development-related issues, including at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, and Ambedkar University, Delhi. She obtained her PhD in Development Studies from the University of East Anglia in the UK.

Dr. Govind, CEO, National Internet Exchange of India, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India

Virat Bhatia, Chairman, FICCI Communications & Digital Economy Committee and President, IEA AT&T, SouthAsia
As Chairman of the FICCI Communications and Digital Economy Committee, Mr. Bhatia currently leads the combined advocacy and policy reform efforts of nearly 150 members - representing leading telecom industry associations, mobile service providers, domestic and long distance service providers, ISPs, internet companies, social media, infrastructure and tower companies, device manufacturers, consultants, legal experts and other related stakeholders in India’s ICT space. He is appointed as a member of the Joint Working Group (JWG) which drafted the “Guidelines on Protection of National Critical Information Infrastructure”, later released by the NSA in June 2013. He serves on the Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG) of DeitY for India IGF, and in the past, on the JWG dealing with issues of cyber security.

At AT&T, Mr. Bhatia serves as President, IEA, for the South Asia region. He has responsibility for supporting all of AT&T’s businesses, corporate development activities, new investments and business strategies. He has been involved with the digital economy sector since 1994.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/internet-governance-and-india-the-way-forward

Internet Governance and Human Rights: Strategies and Collaborations for Empowerment

praskrishna — 2011-04-05T03:59:50Z

Leading up to the 2010 IGF, The Association for Progressive Communications (APC), Global Partners, the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), IT for Change, and the Dynamic Coalition on Internet Rights and Principles are hosting, on 13 September 2010 in Vilnius, an event on 'Internet Governance and Human Rights: Strategies and Collaborations for Empowerment'.

Internet governance has significant impact on human rights. This is reflected by the inclusion of human rights considerations in the Geneva Declaration of Principles and the Tunis Agenda, which gave the IGF its mandate. However, human rights discussions have not featured prominently at the IGF. What discussions there have been tended to focus on civil and political rights without also sufficiently considering how the internet relates to cultural, social and economic rights. The indivisibility of rights has not received the attention it requires.

The Internet governance and human rights communities work in different spaces and rarely have the opportunity to interact. The presence of the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Frank la Rue at the 2009 IGF and again at the 2010 IGF shows that this is beginning to change. The 2010 IGF presents a valuable opportunity to place human rights more firmly on the Internet governance map and to identify opportunities for collaboration with mainstream human rights communities.

With an increasing emphasis on the development agenda in the IGF it is also a good opportunity to look at the links between human rights, development and the Internet.

Join the conversation with human rights, Internet governance and development activists as we review pressing IG issues such as access, diversity, equality, freedom, openness and development with a view to strengthening the human rights agenda at the IGF.

More concretely, we hope to:

continue building effective collaborations promoting human rights in Internet governance, and,
identify appropriate spaces for intervention in the 2010 IGF.

Agenda:

Moderator: Chad Lubelsky. Global Networking, Policy & Advocacy Coordinator,

Association for Progressive Communications (APC)

14:00 Introduction: Background and rationale of the session, aims and objectives. Anriette Esterhuysen (APC)

Keynote speaker : Frank La Rue, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression.

Keynote speaker: Arvind Ganesan, Director or Business and Human Rights Program, Human Rights Watch.

14:45 Questions

15:00 Open discussion session on 'Human rights and internet policy: the interconnectedness of economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights'. Moderated by Lisa Horner (Global Partners) and Anja Kovacs (the Centre for Internet and Society).

15:40 Coffee/tea break

16:00 Breakout group discussions

16:40 Report Backs

17:00 Plenary discussion on the way forward (Anriette Esterhuysen, APC and Parminder Jeet Singh, IT for Change)

17:20 Closing remarks

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/internet-governance-human-rights

Internet Freedom press conference at the UN Fellows

praskrishna — 2012-06-28T06:03:54Z

Published in Weekly ING on June 22, 2012

A central goal of the program is to share experiences and promote understanding of the importance of a free Internet to freedom of expression and association as fundamental rights of the people studied. Fellows are in Geneva June 19 to 22 at the 20th Session of the UN Human Rights Council. Fellows this year on Internet freedom, all human rights activists and practitioners active in the digital media, are from Syria, India, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Venezuela and Azerbaijan. . In Geneva, they will participate in a conversation, global webcast of the United Nations, to “global networks, individual freedom”, Wednesday, Juin 20-1000 EDT (14:00 UTC) The 2012 Fellows are: Dlshad Othman (Syria): Mr. Othman is a Syrian activist and software engineer with the Syrians, the digital resources and support for security features so that they can use online communication and advocacy work freely and safely, despite the increased repression of E-Government in the form of censorship, Cyber-attacks and sophisticated monitoring intense.Pranesh Prakash (India): Mr. Prakash is a program manager at the Center for Internet and Society at Bangalore. He works primarily in areas where policies intersect and technology, conduct research and policy advocacy on issues of online freedom of expression, access to knowledge, intellectual property and Internet governance reform Koundjoro Gabriel Kambou (Burkina Faso). Mr. Kambou is a newspaper reporter and a presenter at Lefaso.net blogs. He wooed and promotes human rights and the values of democracy and freedom of the press. He publishes articles and videos to educate and raise awareness on issues of human rights Sopheap Chak (Cambodia):. Ms Chak is the program director of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights (CCHR) is a leading Cambodian human rights activist bloggers. It mobilizes youth activists around the country in civic engagement through the Youth Network of Cambodia to change. She is the author of the online Global Voice, UPI Asia Online, and calls Furutre.Andres Azpurua (Venezuela): Mr. Azpurua is committed to the creation of digital tools to allow Venezuelans to better exercise their rights. O He has to create a digital platform that promotes and defends the rights of voters helped. It is also the founder of a digital initiative to establish a voluntary civil society to the right of the Milli Venezuela.Emin (Azerbaijan) is to be promoted: Mr. Milli is a writer and dissident who has actively used online networking tools, to disseminate information on violations of human rights in Azerbaijan. He was in for 16 months for his critical views on the Government of Azerbaijan in prison. He was pardoned in 2010 and is currently writing his doctoral work in London, the “New Media and the Arab revolutions”. U.S. Mission Photo by Eric Bridiers.

Internet

Image the U.S. mission in Geneva

The Internet Freedom Fellows Program of the U.S. State funded Department and administered by the United States Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, provides human rights activists around the world in Geneva, Washington, and Silicon Valley to work with other activists, U.S. and international to meet government and members of civil society and the private sector in technology and the human rights involved. A central goal of the program is to share experiences and promote understanding of the importance of a free Internet to freedom of expression and association as fundamental rights of the people studied. Fellows are in Geneva June 19 to 22 at the 20th Session of the UN Human Rights Council. Fellows this year on Internet freedom, all human rights activists and practitioners active in the digital media, are from Syria, India, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Venezuela and Azerbaijan. . In Geneva, they will participate in a conversation, global webcast of the United Nations, to “global networks, individual freedom”, Wednesday, Juin 20-1000 EDT (14:00 UTC) The 2012 Fellows are: Dlshad Othman (Syria): Mr. Othman is a Syrian activist and software engineer with the Syrians, the digital resources and support for security features so that they can use online communication and advocacy work freely and safely, despite the increased repression of E-Government in the form of censorship, Cyber-attacks and sophisticated monitoring intense.Pranesh Prakash (India): Mr. Prakash is a program manager at the Center for Internet and Society at Bangalore. He works primarily in areas where policies intersect and technology, conduct research and policy advocacy on issues of online freedom of expression, access to knowledge, intellectual property and Internet governance reform Koundjoro Gabriel Kambou (Burkina Faso). Mr. Kambou is a newspaper reporter and a presenter at Lefaso.net blogs. He wooed and promotes human rights and the values of democracy and freedom of the press. He publishes articles and videos to educate and raise awareness on issues of human rights Sopheap Chak (Cambodia):. Ms Chak is the program director of the Cambodian Centre for Human Rights (CCHR) is a leading Cambodian human rights activist bloggers. It mobilizes youth activists around the country in civic engagement through the Youth Network of Cambodia to change. She is the author of the online Global Voice, UPI Asia Online, and calls Furutre.Andres Azpurua (Venezuela): Mr. Azpurua is committed to the creation of digital tools to allow Venezuelans to better exercise their rights. O He has to create a digital platform that promotes and defends the rights of voters helped. It is also the founder of a digital initiative to establish a voluntary civil society to the right of the Milli Venezuela.Emin (Azerbaijan) is to be promoted: Mr. Milli is a writer and dissident who has actively used online networking tools, to disseminate information on violations of human rights in Azerbaijan. He was in for 16 months for his critical views on the Government of Azerbaijan in prison. He was pardoned in 2010 and is currently writing his doctoral work in London, the “New Media and the Arab revolutions”.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/internet-freedom-press-conference-at-un-fellows

Internet Freedom in India – Open to Debate

praskrishna — 2013-01-25T10:45:56Z

In the aftermath of an Index on Censorship debate in New Delhi, Kirsty Hughes says India’s web users are standing at a crossroads

This article by Kirsty Hughes was published in Index on Censorship. CIS's research on censorship is quoted.

If debate is a sign of a positive environment for internet freedom, then India scores highly. From debates in parliament, and panel discussions (including Index’s own recent event) to newspaper editorials, blogs and tweets on the rights and wrongs of internet freedom, controls on the web, and India’s position in the international debate, there is no shortage of voices and views.

India has around 120 million web users — a large number but still only about 10 per cent of the country’s population. As cheaper smart phones enable millions more to access the net on their mobiles, India’s net savvy population is set to soar in the next few years. But what sort of online environment they will find is open to question — and to wide debate.

India has some very broad laws that could apply to a wide range of online speech, comment and criticism. These laws have been so far rather randomly applied. But the cases that have arisen — from individuals criticising politicians by email, Facebook or Twitter to some of the big web companies such as Google and Facebook (both facing numerous takedown requests and court cases in India) — show just why India needs to look at limiting both the range of some of its net laws, and to stop these laws criminalising a range of speech.

In 2012, there was widespread outcry in India when two women were arrested for complaining on Facebook about the disruption caused by the funeral of Bal Thackeray, leader of the right wing Hindu party, Shiv Sena. They were arrested under the infamous section 66A of India’s IT Act (2008) which criminalises “grossly offensive” and “menacing” messages sent by electronic means, but also “false” messages sent to cheat, deceive, mislead or annoy, taking online censorship beyond offline laws.

India’s telecom minister Kapil Sibal spoke out against the arrests. And as part of the fallout, guidelines were announced that in future any such charges could only be brought by senior police. But how effective such a restriction might be was challenged, with aTimes of India editorial suggesting “rampant political interference in law enforcement is itself a burning issue…so to argue that senior police officers will always resist mob pressure or political diktats isn’t persuasive.”

Other parts of the IT Act (2008) are also causing a chilling atmosphere in India’s cyber sphere — with new regulations introduced in 2011 obliging internet service providers to take down content within 36 of a complaint (whether an individual, organisation, government body or anyone else) or face prosecution. The law covers a sweeping range of grounds for complaint, including “grossly harmful”, “harassing, “blasphemous” and more. It also is confused on liability – holding intermediaries large and small responsible for content on websites and platforms.

One of India’s leading policy centres on digital issues, the Centre for Internet and Society, decided to test how this 36-hour takedown rule could result in censorship of innocuous and legal content on web sites. They sent complaints to four main search engines across a range of content — and as a result got thousands of innocuous posts removed; a censor’s dream outcome.

Despite a debate in parliament calling for repeal of the 2011 rules, for now they remain.

Some observers suggest the Indian government is catch-up mode, not fully understanding the reach or nature of social media or how to deal with the international range and speed of the web today — something plenty of other governments around the world are showing some confusion about. Some think the lively debate on net freedom in India reflects the voice and demands of the growing Indian middle class. But whether those demands remain pro-freedom is yet to be seen as internet penetration grows apace.

There are some other encouraging signs. While many in India are not keen at US dominance of key parts of internet regulation, there was concern from business and civil society ahead of the International Telecommunications Union summit in December 2012, when the Indian government looked like it might advocate some form of top down control of the web as an alternative. In the event, India, like the EU and US, did not go along with Russia, China and others keen to include net governance into the ITU’s remit.

India is going to be an increasingly influential voice in global internet debates — with its rapidly growing number of netizens and its increasing clout more widely in a multipolar world.

Its healthy and lively debate about digital freedom stands as a beacon of hope in the face of some of its more disturbing laws. But the laws will need to change, if India is to be a country that stands for internet freedom.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/index-on-censorship-kirsty-hughes-january-22-2013-internet-freedom-in-india

Internet Freedom Festival 2017

praskrishna — 2017-03-29T11:24:38Z

The Global Unconference of the Internet Freedom Communities took place at Valencia in Spain from March 6 to 10, 2017. The event was organized by the IFF. Vidushi Marda on behalf of CIS took part in the event.

Vidushi as part of her work with Working Group 1 (WG1) of the Freedom Online Coalition (FOC), organised a workshop along with Mallory Knodel from APC. This workshop was titled "Practical implementations of human rights respecting cybersecurity policy". Participants in the workshop were divided into groups to evaluate the recommendations developed by WG1 in light of existing cyber security policies from around the world. The recommendations can be found here and the accompanying narrative document can be found here.

The session ended up being productive - we received feedback from participants about the effectiveness of the recommendations, and also about aspects of these recommendations that needed revisiting/more work. A more detailed account of the session can be found at the Wiki page.

Vidushi also attended the following sessions:

Data Protection Law and its Different Manifestations
Using the Ranking Digital Rights Corporate Accountability Index for Advocacy & Research
The identity we can't change: a new wave of biometric policies around the world
Enabling free speech online by legal defence: the need for skilled lawyers to secure the free flow of information online: Vidushi channeled a discussion about Shreya Singhal v. Union of India as an important case study in understanding how legal defence has been used to secure rights online. She specifically spoke about the distinction made in the judgment b/w communications on the internet vs. communications elsewhere.

For more info see here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/internet-freedom-festival-2017

Internet Freedom Fellows Program Emphasizes Defense of Fundamental Freedoms Online

praskrishna — 2012-07-02T06:47:31Z

At the Human Rights Council (HRC), the United States has consistently placed special emphasis on the protection and promotion of the freedoms of expression, peaceful assembly and association, because we understand that these fundamental freedoms are essential to facilitating the exercise of other universal rights.

Published on DipNote, the US Department of State Official Blog

Ambassador Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe serves as the U.S. Representative to the Human Rights Council. His blog post was published on DipNote on June 25, 2012.

As activity in the economic, social, and the political realms gravitates from the offline world to the online world, we have an additional responsibility to ensure that human rights and fundamental freedoms are not eroded simply because they are being exercised in the digital realm. The United States is committed to the principle that the same rights that people have offline must also be protected in the online world.

Last week, I had the chance to spend time with the Internet Freedom Fellows, six young human rights activists, each of whom is working in his or her own way to promote and defend freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and association, and all other human rights on the Internet. The Internet Freedom Fellows (IFF) program is funded by the State Department's Innovation Fund and the U.S. Mission in Geneva, and was designed to follow up on Secretary Clinton's pledge to find innovative ways to promote the use of the Internet in support of human rights. The 2012 Fellows are: Dlshad Othman (Syria), Pranesh Prakash (India), Koundjoro Gabriel Kambou (Burkina Faso), Sopheap Chak (Cambodia), Andres Azpurua (Venezuela), and Emin Milli (Azerbaijan).

The fellows' visit to Geneva coincided with a moment when the Human Rights Council is seized with these issues: The United States and a cross regional group of countries consisting of Brazil, Nigeria, Tunisia, and Turkey have joined with Sweden to present a resolution on the Promotion, Protection and Enjoyment of Human Rights on the Internet. If adopted later this session, this landmark text will mark the first time the Council has substantively addressed the issue of human rights online in a resolution.

As the global community has watched during the past 18 months, individuals across the Middle East, North Africa and beyond have taken to both physical town squares and virtual spaces to express their legitimate aspirations and demand democracy. The Internet has become an essential medium through which journalists, activists, and citizens connect and share information in ways that are changing their societies.

One of this year's fellows is Dlshad Othman, a Syrian activist and IT engineer who has put his own life in danger to assist his fellow Syrian citizen journalists. Sitting next to me at a UN press conference, Dlshad explained how he helps provide Syrians with digital security resources so that they can communicate online freely and securely despite Assad's "electronic army," with its active online censorship and surveillance. Although he cannot currently return to his country, Dlshad is focused on making it possible for the world to hear the voices of people inside Syria. "This is actually the only way that we have at this time, since there isn't any media on the ground."

As the Representative of the United States to the Human Rights Council, I am inspired by these fellows and the courage they've displayed in using the digital realm to advocate for the human rights of their fellow citizens. I will recall their stories and experiences as I work to promote these fundamental freedoms in the Human Rights Council.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/defense-of-fundamental-freedoms-online

Internet Freedom At Home: Governments, Companies Need Accountability, Speakers Say

praskrishna — 2012-06-28T05:27:43Z

The freedom to access the internet does not translate into freedom of expression in many countries of the world, including in western economies, according to speakers at a peer forum organised yesterday by the United States mission to the United Nations in Geneva.

Catherine Saez wrote this for Intellectual Property Watch on June 22, 2012

Both governments and companies, prime providers of internet surveillance technologies in particular in the developed countries, need to be held accountable for the destination and use of those technologies, some of which run counter to human rights.

The peer forum on internet freedom and human rights was held on 21 June and gathered technology experts, and human right activists, with the participation of the mission’s Internet Freedom Fellows programme, organised since 2011 in parallel with the UN Human Rights Council.

Freedom to connect exists in most countries where internet surveillance runs counter to human rights but not freedom from fear, Rebecca MacKinnon, former CNN journalist and co-founder of Global Voices Online said.

“Internet freedom does not mean just free networks, it means free people,” MacKinnon said. “Accomplishing that and constraining the abuse of power across digital networks is a tough problem.”

Strong Global Standard Needed, Democracies also Concerned

In the Internet Age, it is technically trivial both for corporations and governments to gain access to people’s private communications, she said. The issue is that without strong global standards the empowering potential of the internet is going to be diminished, she said. This is true not only for interconnection but also public transparency and accountability in how surveillance technologies are developed, deployed. And it applies to how information is shared between governments and between companies and governments.

Even in democracies, “we are really struggling” with the issue of how to make sure that in the legitimate fight against crime, terrorism, cyber attacks, which all are real problems, the mechanisms put in place are not abused, she said. How can it ensured that those who hold power through those mechanisms will be accountable when they use that power for purposes that were not intended, she asked. She cited a recent report from the American Civil Liberties Union http://www.aclu.org/spy-files on widespread surveillance by US law enforcement agencies across the US.

Surveillance technologies “are being sold very obviously to governments who clearly are going to abuse that technology,” she said. She mentioned what has been nicknamed the “Wiretappers’ Ball” to describe trade fairs run by a company which invites law enforcement and security agencies from around the world to meet with companies that built those technologies.

The last one of those fairs was held “not too far from Washington, DC” and 35 US federal agencies were present, along with representatives of 43 different countries, she said, with ” no questions asked.”

A lot of these technologies are being built or developed primarily by western companies with western governments as prime customers, but are being sold blatantly to countries like Azerbaijan (which has been reported recently for its crackdown on free expression) and others, she said.

As a major customer, the United States needs to demand transparency on the part of these companies about where those technologies are being sold and used, MacKinnon said, adding, “Internet freedom starts at home.”

There is a need to demand that governments be accountable and transparent on what surveillance technologies exist and how they are being deployed and used, and not only at the domestic level, but globally.

As an example of transparency, she cited the Google transparency report, which lists the number of requests from governments around the world both for user information and takedown requests. MacKinnon said the top requesters were democratic governments.

All companies should be requested to provide similar transparency reports, she said, and governments should also issue transparency reports about the number of requests they are making. “There should be ways to do this without compromising active investigation,” she said.

MacKinnon recently published a book entitled, “Consent of the Networked.”

Internet: Shopping Mall or Public Square
A panel discussion addressed the protection of human rights in a world of global networks in which two visions of the internet were described. One is§ the internet as a shopping mall, mainly owned by private interests, the other one as a public square.

Robert Whelan from the International Committee of the Red Cross raised the concept of informed consent in the context of victims of armed conflicts. The victims of violation of human rights law have the right to know what information is going to be used about their experience, or their story, he said. They should know where this information will go, who is going to see it, have access to it, where that information is going to be replicated or reproduced and when will that information will be deleted, he added.

The challenge is to put the civilian victims at the centre, and in control of the information about their experience. This is at odds with the concept of free exchange of information, he said, citing as examples the “re-tweeting” and reproducing of articles, photographs and names on the internet.

Nicolas Seidler from the Internet Society said the internet is not “the wild west” but just the digital version of the real world, and as such is subject to the same human rights instruments. The challenge is that no new rights are needed; rather the need is to implement and reinforce human rights standards on the internet, he said. Governments’ management of the internet is but a reflection of their overall management, he said.

For Brett Solomon, executive director of Accessnow.org, a US-based nongovernmental organisation pushing for digital freedom, several issues are laid out in the “Silicon Valley Standard” [pdf]. The standard was developed after the Silicon Valley human rights conference held in San Francisco in 2011.

The effort to protect rights holders and copyrights by the copyright industry, which he qualified as “voracious,” is putting internet intermediaries at risk of liability, he said.

Effective internet security is essential, he said, as “there is no freedom of speech unless people feel safe and secure.” He called for the right to encryption of web activity. “Technology companies must provide a basic level of security … to their users by default and resist bans and curtailments of the use of encryption,” the standard says.

David Sullivan, policy and communications director for the Global Network Initiative (GNI) presented the initiative, which gathers information and communication technology stakeholders and provides a framework for companies based on international standards. Companies that commit to GNI standards also commit to being assessed independently, he said, on how they implement principles, if they have policies and procedures in place to meet standards and accountability commitments.

Sullivan cited the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the failed US legislation, as a policy effort aimed at solving one problem around copyright infringing material that is was “going to have deeply worrisome repercussions around the world as other countries look at that example in ways that could have deeply problematic consequences in terms of censorship.”

This year, the human right activists participating in the Internet Freedom Fellows programme are: Dishad Othman from Syria, Pranesh Prakash from India, Koundjoro Gabriel Kambou from Burkina Faso, Sopheap Chak from Cambodia, Andreas Azpurua from Venezuela and Emin Milli from Azerbaijan. Short biographies are here.

Emin Milli, a writer who was imprisoned for expressing his opinion in Azerbajian, said he looked at internet as a public square and not a shopping mall but the situations vastly differ from one country to the other, he added, as contexts are very different. The Eurovision song contest, which was held in the country this year, was a great opportunity for civil society, with the help of international media to draw attention to the situation of Azerbaijan.

Dishad Othman, a Syrian activist and IT engineer, characterised himself as a security activist as he is helping people to use tools to hide themselves on the internet. Sharing experiences from different countries is very important, he said, calling for a larger group of international activists who could help people but also technology companies to provide a safer environment and to promote freedom on the internet so that “all people can benefit from it.”

Pranesh Prakash, programme manager at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, said people have tools to protect themselves from surveillance that they do not use. In particular, he said, many journalists do not know how to use those tools, especially in the context of journalists’ computers and files that are seized, endangering their sources.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/internet-freedom-at-home

Internet firms deny existence of PRISM

praskrishna — 2013-07-02T07:47:27Z

Nothing is private anymore. According to a leak in the US, which revealed the wide reach of a mass surveillance programme by intelligence agencies, messages, posts, chats on your computer or phone are all vulnerable to interception, thanks to direct access to servers of major tech companies.

The article by Javed Anwer and Ishan Srivastava was published in the Times of India on June 8, 2013. Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash are quoted.

The existence of the programme, called Prism, was first reported by the Washington Post and the Guardian newspaper after they received a tip-off from a whistleblower in National Security Agency in the US. The whistleblower claimed that NSA has direct access to all the data that flows through the servers of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Sykpe, Youtube, AOL and Paltalk.

Later, the NSA reportedly acknowledged the existence of the programme but said that it collected data only from foreign nationals. While it may come as a relief to the US citizens, it underscores the fact that people not residing in the US, including Indians, are fair game. What is even more alarming is the fact that US authorities are using the technology companies headquartered in the country to spy on the rest of the world.

All companies named in the leaks have denied the existence of Prism. A Yahoo spokesperson said on Friday, ""Yahoo! takes users' privacy very seriously. We do not provide the government with direct access to our servers, systems, or network."

Privacy International, a privacy watchdog organisation, said it is possible that companies would not be aware of the government tapping into their servers. "Until we know whether this information was obtained through filters, interception, or some another method, it is difficult to know how the breadth of access the NSA has."

However, Indian users would seem to have no way to defend themselves if the US government wants to access their data. Pavan Duggal, a specialist in cyber law, said, "Indian users don't have any protection against the US authorities seeking their data from the US companies."

Technology companies said they comply with local laws while dealing with issues related to personal data of a user. In response to queries from TOI, both Google and Facebook said that they used "mutual legal assistance treaty" to handle international requests for data.

Mutual legal assistance treaty is understood to have governed by actual treaties that two nations may have between them for sharing of user data. A Facebook official said that if a US agency wanted to access the data belonging to an Indian citizen, the sleuths would have to follow the diplomatic channels and get the data only when Indian authorities have approved it.

Google too talked "mutual legal assistance treaty" but it didn't clarify how it worked. Google officials pointed out the company guidelines which noted that any non-US government agency would have to use mutual legal assistance treaty to access user data. But the company public guidelines don't make any mention of the procedure followed in the cases where a US agency requests data on non-US users.

Microsoft directed TOI to its official statement denying the existence of Prism. It refused to discuss how it handled the requests from US authorities seeking data of foreigners.

Pranesh Prakash, a policy director with Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), said that it was high time the Indian government stood up for its citizens.

"Indian government needs to come with a strong and clear law to protect the privacy of Indian users. The law has to make it clear to companies operating in India that they need to respect the privacy of Indian users, even when they are dealing with the governments outside India," he said.

However, providing direct access to servers to an agency like NSA may not necessarily be a breach of agreement between the users of websites like Google and Facebook and its owners. Sunil Abraham, executive director at CIS said, "I have not studied end-user agreements carefully, but usually they have provisions for communication interception and data access in accordance with legal procedure."

"But more importantly, this is a violation of US data access and interception law. The US government has been going around the world preaching Internet freedom to authoritarian regimes. And now it turns out that their practices are worse that many of the regimes they have been criticizing. That is why it is a complete scandal," Abraham said.

Besides, the surveillance may run contrary to a whole range of international legal instruments. For example, the ICCPR, ratified by the USA, says that "no one shall be subject to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his private life, family, home or correspondence," said Joe McNamee, executive director of European Digital Rights, a privacy watchdog based in Europe.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-javed-anwer-ishan-srivastava-june-8-2013-internet-firms-deny-existence-of-prism

Internet expert Pranesh Prakash criticizes Indian cyber blockades

praskrishna — 2012-08-24T12:58:02Z

The government's attempts to block social media accounts and websites that it blames for spreading panic have been inept and possibly illegal, a top internet expert said on Friday.

Published in the Economic Times on August 24, 2012.

Earlier this month, thousands of people from the country's remote northeast began fleeing cities in southern and western India, as rumors swirled that they would be attacked in retaliation for ethnic violence against Muslims in their home state.

Last weekend, the government said the rumors were fed by gory images - said to be of murdered Muslims - that were actually manipulated photos of people killed in cyclones and earthquakes. Officials said the images were spread to sow fear of revenge attacks.

After that, the government began interfering with hundreds of websites, including some Twitter accounts, blogs and links to certain news stories. The government also ordered telephone companies to sharply restrict mass text messages.

It is unclear who has been spreading the inflammatory material. Experts say that despite the government's electronic interference, there are many ways to access the blocked sites.

"The government has gone overboard and many of its efforts are legally questionable,'' said Pranesh Prakash, who studies internet governance and freedom of speech at The Center for Internet and Society, a research organization in the southern city of Bangalore.

The center has published a list of over 300 internet links blocked in the last two weeks. These include some pages on Facebook, YouTube and news items on the sites of Al Jazeera, Australia's ABC, and a handful of Indian and Pakistani news sites.

The exodus of people from the northeast followed clashes in Assam state over the last several weeks between ethnic Bodos and Muslims settlers. At least 80 people were killed in that violence and 400,000 were displaced. Most of those who fled were living in Bangalore, where text messages spread quickly threatening retaliatory attacks by Muslims.

The Bodos and the Muslim settlers - most of whom arrived years ago from what was then East Pakistan, and which is now Bangladesh_have clashed repeatedly over the decades. But the recent violence was the worst since the mid-1990s.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/economic-times-aug-24-2012-internet-expert-pranesh-prakash-criticizes-indian-cyber-blockades

Internet expert criticizes Indian cyber blockades

praskrishna — 2012-08-28T10:11:44Z

The Indian government's attempts to block social media accounts and websites that it blames for spreading panic have been inept and possibly illegal, a top Internet expert said Friday.

Written by Muneeza Naqvi, this was originally published in Associated Press on August 24, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Last weekend, the government said the rumors were fed by gory images — said to be of murdered Muslims — that were actually manipulated photos of people killed in cyclones and earthquakes. Officials said the images were spread to sow fear of revenge attacks.

It is unclear who has been spreading the inflammatory material. Experts say that despite the government's electronic interference, there are many ways to access the blocked sites.

"The government has gone overboard and many of its efforts are legally questionable," said Pranesh Prakash, who studies Internet governance and freedom of speech at The Center for Internet and Society, a research organization in the southern city of Bangalore.

The center has published a list of more than 300 Internet links blocked in the last two weeks. These include some pages on Facebook, YouTube and news items on the sites of Al Jazeera, Australia's ABC, and a handful of Indian and Pakistani news sites.

On Friday, the Twitter account of Milind Deora, India's junior communications minister, appeared blocked. A message at his (at)milinddeora account said "the profile you are trying to view has been suspended."

Deora told the Press Trust of India news agency that his account was being verified and was only temporarily suspended. PTI said Deora had been tweeting in defense of the government blocking efforts before the account was suspended.

The Bodos and the Muslim settlers — most of whom arrived years ago from what was then East Pakistan, and which is now Bangladesh — have clashed repeatedly over the decades. But the recent violence was the worst since the mid-1990s.

"The government's highest priority should have been to counter the rumors and it did a really bad job of that," said Prakash, adding that the government should have at least tried to counter the panic through the same social media sites that it was blocking.

The government's actions have sparked outrage on social networking sites, with hashtags critical of the government quickly becoming top trending topics on Twitter's India site.

But Prakash was as dismissive of that reaction as he was of the government attempts at censorship.

The government's actions reek of "the kind of incompetence one has come to expect," he said, "but the hashtags (hash)Emergency2012 etc. suffer from a lack of perspective, too."

Kapil Sibal, the senior minister of communications and information technology, said in a statement that Facebook and Google were cooperating with the government and shutting down some sites that the government had pointed out as objectionable. Sibal said Twitter had also said it was ready to talk with the government.

But he said that "the accusations that we are aggressively targeting someone's account or websites are incorrect."

On Thursday, Victoria Nuland, spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department, had told reporters that it was urging the Indian government "to take into account the importance of freedom of expression in the online world" while addressing its security concerns. She said the U.S. was ready to help India's efforts to talk to social networks regarding the issue."

The above was carried in the following places:

Bloomberg Businessweek (August 24, 2012)
Khaleej Times (August 24, 2012)
ABC News (August 24, 2012)
Seattle Times (August 24, 2012)
Vancouver Sun (August 24, 2012)
Kansas City. (August 24, 2012)
Times Colonist (August 24, 2012)
Merced Sun-Star (August 24, 2012)
Yahoo News (August 24, 2012)
SanLuisObispo.com (August 24, 2012)
Terrorism Watch (August 25, 2012)
Sci-Tech Today (August 26, 2012)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/hosted-2-ap-org-aug-24-2012-internet-expert-criticizes-indian-cyber-blockades

Internet Curbs

praskrishna — 2012-02-13T12:29:24Z

A Delhi high court judge threatens to go the China way. The IT act is closing in. The war on the web is a war on us, writes Rishi Majumder in an article that was published in Tehelka on 18 February 2012.

AT TIMES, the law becomes a smoke-screen for itself. How things seem to be shrouds the way they actually are. Here’s how things seem to be. Righteous Indian crusader Mufti Aijaz Arshad Qasmi and journalist Vinay Rai have taken multinational giants Facebook, Google and 19 other websites to task. They have done so by filing a civil suit and a criminal complaint because of images they thought were offensive to Hindus, Muslims and Christians, as well as several political leaders.

Both cases lie in Delhi’s lower courts. The civil suit, filed by Qasmi, prays for the removal of this content and assurances that such content will not be hosted by the websites in the future. The criminal complaint calls for the prosecution of these companies under Sections 292 (“sale, etc. of obscene books, etc.”), 293 (“sale, etc., of obscene objects to a young person”) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code.

While judgment on these cases are pending, the efforts of Qasmi and Rai have begun to bear fruit. In the criminal case, the websites have been issued summons by a Delhi trial court. Facebook and Google India sought a stay on these from the Delhi High Court, which was not granted. Instead, Justice Suresh Kait warned that, “like China, we will block all these websites”, while asking the companies to develop a mechanism to keep a check on and remove “offensive and objectionable” material. With respect to the civil suit, the companies have been told by the court on 6 February to submit within 15 days reports of steps they have taken to block offensive content. Also on the same day, Facebook and Google removed content from the Indian domains of their websites.

Now for how things actually are. First, the least one would expect of such a criminal complaint is that it would mention the actual perpetrator of the crime. But, as Sunil Abraham, executive director at the Centre for Internet and Society, wrote in TEHELKA (The Quixotic Fight to Clean Up the Web, 28 January): “It is curious that the complaint (of Rai) does not mention specific individuals or groups directly responsible for authoring the allegedly offensive material. Only intermediaries (the websites) have been explicitly named.”

Second, to hold these websites responsible for these crimes, one would have to prove that they had “actual knowledge” of this content (as stated in Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, that is being read along with the IPC to interpret the latter in the context of this case), and did nothing to prevent it.

Otherwise, as Congress MP Shashi Tharoor tweeted in the middle of this imbroglio, prosecuting Facebook and Google for this content would be like “phone companies being sued if someone sends a defamatory or obscene SMS”.

Third, what mechanism does the court expect Facebook and Google to develop to keep a check on and remove “offensive and objectionable” material? According to Oxblood Ruffin, a Canadian hacker who is a member of the Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc, the hackers group that coined the term ‘hacktivist’), it’s “impossible” for websites such as Facebook and Google to actually ensure that such content isn’t hosted in the future.

Facebook and Google are fast emerging as the biggest platforms for expression and exchange in a country that has the third largest number of Internet users in the world (175 million broadband connections by 2014, according to the Department of Telecommunications).

Instead of creating an authority to police the Web, the Internet rules outsource this job to intermediaries

“You will have to double the workforce to have content monitors, and even then it won’t be possible,” says Ruffin. “You aren’t going to filter the content (according to keywords) because that will raise censorship issues.”

Yet filtering content seems to be the only way Facebook and Google can deliver what Justice Kait asks of them. And blocking so many websites because they happen to contain “obscene” keywords like ‘sex’ or ‘virgin’ is a lot like banning lawful assembly because someone made a hate speech. The irony is this would make us “like China” anyway.

AT THE heart of this controversy is one of two new sets of Internet rules notified by the Centre last April, dealing with the liability of intermediaries, which is being used to give the provisions of criminal and civil law more specific effect in the courtrooms. For instance, Rai’s counsel argued that Google’s terms of service didn’t reflect these rules, as they were supposed to. This was refuted by his opposing counsel, who pointed out that the terms of service of the Department of Information Technology website didn’t contain them either.

Rightly so. This set of rules, like the two cases pegged on it, infringes upon our Constitution as well as our common sense. Instead of giving us a clear idea of what they wish to censor, the rules pretend to elucidate this with terms like “grossly harmful”, “harassing”, “disparaging” or “insulting any other nation”. And “blasphemous” — a frightening term. “Blasphemous is a word alien to Indian legal language,” says Internet freedom activist Anja Kovacs. “But now, with these rules, it could gradually be incorporated into mainstream law.”

Further, instead of appointing an authority to administer them, the Internet rules outsource this job to the intermediaries — making them liable to remove within 36 hours any information they store, host or publish, if a complainant claims that this contravenes the rules.

FINALLY, LET’S return to the law. These rules, adopted by the Centre under powers conferred to it by the IT (Amendment) Act, 2008, are a smokescreen that covers the infringement of a very basic Indian fundamental right. Article 21, which says: “No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law.”

In 1977, animal rights activist Maneka Gandhi was asked by the government to surrender her passport, and not given a reason for this. Not given a chance to be heard. A writ petition filed by her led the Supreme Court to deliver a landmark judgment that held that the right to “life or personal liberty” included Maneka’s right to travel because “a fundamental right is not an island in itself” and so Article 21 was to be understood in conjunction with other fundamental rights [such as the freedom of speech, enshrined in 19(1)(a)]. Justice VR Krishna Iyer, who was on the Bench that delivered the judgment, explained that “the spirit of man is at the root of Article 21”, “personal liberty makes for the worth of the human person” and “travel makes liberty worthwhile”.

But most significantly, the court held that the “procedure established by law” in Article 21 could not be a mere semblance of procedure but should fulfil the principles of natural justice — one of which is “the right to be heard”.

With the passing of these rules, millions of Indians have been denied this right — including the writer of this article. If, on going online, there is a complaint calling it “grossly harmful”, “harassing”, “disparaging”, or worse still, “blasphemous”, it will have to be taken down, in 36 hours, with his only recourse being to line up at the same courts that lawyers representing Facebook and Google and Qasmi and Rai have been visiting for months now. That’s where the smokescreen dissipates.

The original was published in Tehelka Magazine, Vol 9, Issue 07, Dated 18 Feb 2012, Sunil Abraham is quoted in it.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/internet-curbs