Centre for Internet and Society

Meeting on Proactive Disclosure and Personal Data (Delhi, May 13, 5:30 pm)

sumandro — 2017-05-13T04:32:41Z

CIS is organising an informal discussion on topics related to proactive disclosure and personal data thrown up by the recently published report by Amber Sinha and Srinivas Kodali titled "Information Security Practices of Aadhaar (or lack thereof)". Please join us at 5:30 pm today, May 13, at the CIS office.

Read the report: PDF

Location

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/meeting-on-proactive-disclosure-and-personal-data-delhi-may-13

MediaNama - #NAMAprivacy: The Future of User Data (Delhi, Sep 6)

sumandro — 2017-09-05T10:22:12Z

MediaNama is hosting a full day conference on "the future of user data in India", on the 6th of September 2017, which is particularly significant given the recent Supreme Court ruling on the fundamental right to privacy, and two government consultations: one at the TRAI, and another at MEITY. This discussion is supported by Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, will participate as a speaker in the session titled "regulating storage, sharing and transfer of data."

Details

Time: September 6th 2017, 9 am to 4:30 pm

Venue: Gulmohar Hall, India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road (please enter from Gate #3)

Agenda: https://www.medianama.com/2017/08/223-agenda-namaprivacy-future-of-user-data/

Announced Speakers

Chinmayi Arun, Centre for Communication Governance at NLU Delhi
Malavika Raghavan, IFMR Finance Foundation
Renuka Sane, NIPFP
Smitha Krishna Prasad, Centre for Communication Governance at NLU Delhi
Ananth Padmanabhan, Carnegie India
Avinash Ramachandra, Amazon
Hitesh Oberoi, Naukri
Jochai Ben-Avie, Mozilla
Mrinal Sinha, Mobikwik
Murari Sreedharan, Bankbazaar
Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Centre for Internet and Society

Facilitators

Saikat Datta, Asia Times Online
Shashidar KJ, MediaNama
Nikhil Pahwa, MediaNama

Attendees

We have confirmed 140+ attendees from: Adobe, Amber Health, Amazon, APCO Worldwide, Bank Bazaar, Bloomberg-Quint, Blume Ventures, Broadband India Forum, Business Standard, BuzzFeed News, CCOAI, CEIP, Change Alliance, Chase India, CIS, CNN News18, DEF, Deloitte, DNA, DSCI, E2E Networks, British High Commission, Eurus Network Services, FICCI, Firefly Networks, Flipkart, Forrester Research, Fortumo, DoT, MEITY, IAMAI, IBM, ICRIER, IFMR Finance Foundation, IIMC, Indian Law Institute, Indic Project, Info Edge, ISPAI, IT for Change, ITU-APT, Jamia Millia Islamia, Jindal Global Law School, Mimir Technologies, Mozilla, Newslaundry, NIPFP, Nishith Desai Associates, NIXI, NLU-Delhi, ORF, Paytm, PLR Chambers, PRS Legislative Research, Publicis Groupe, Quartz India, Reliance Jio, Reuters, Saikrishna & Associates, Scroll.in, SFLC.in, Spectranet, The Economics Times, The Indian Express, The Times of India, The Wire, Times Internet, Twitter, and more.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/medianama-namaprivacy-the-future-of-user-data-delhi-sep-6

Mathematisation of the Urban and not Urbanisation of Mathematics: Smart Cities and the Primitive Accumulation of Data - Accepted Abstract

sumandro — 2015-11-13T05:47:13Z

"Many accounts of smart cities recognise the historical coincidence of cybernetic control and neoliberal capital. Even where it is machines which process the vast amounts of data produced by the city so much so that the ruling and managerial classes disappear from view, it is usually the logic of capital that steers the flows of data, people and things. Yet what other futures of the city may be possible within the smart city, what collective intelligence may it bring forth?" The Fibreculture Journal has accepted an abstract of mine for its upcoming issue on 'Computing the City.'

Speaking to Geert Lovink, Wolfgang Ernst explains that '[t]he coupling of machine and mathematics that enables computers occurs as a mathematization of machine, not as machinization of mathematics' [1]. In this paper, I propose that the idea of smart cities be understood not as 'urbanisation of mathematics' – as often described by industry documents, design fictions, and academic analyses – but as 'mathematisation of the urban.' By the notion of 'urbanisation of mathematics,' I indicate at those reports that conceptualise smart cities as data analytics, or civic mathematics, at an urban scale. I explain how this notion is shared by design visions of actors from the networking industry, such as IBM and Cisco, emerging academic practices in urban science and informatics, and calls for urbanising the technologies of regulation and governance, in the sense of making these technologies directly and bi-directionally interact with the urban citizens [2]. Conversely, the 'mathematisation of the urban' perspective foregrounds a specific transformation at hand in the production of urban space itself, which I argue is what is captured in the idea of smart cities. This transformation is not a new thing, and has been heralded by the coming of coded infrastructures and the transduction of urban space through them [3]. The process of 'mathematisation of the urban' refers to a fundamental reorganisation of the urban itself so as to make aspects of it available to mathematical manipulation, most often undertaken by software systems. This mathematisation takes place through the rebuilding of urban infrastructures so as to facilitate sensing and recording of parts of urban lives and processes as mathematical data, and the embedding of coded assemblages that can communicate and act upon the analysis of such data, and also through re-building the relations of property around this newly-obtained and continuously-generated resource of data about the urban.

I propose in this paper that production, circulation, and ownership of data must be considered as a central problematique in the discussions of smart cities. As writings on smart cities have often focused on the dyadic relationships between code and space on one hand, and co-evolution (and splintering) of networked infrastructures and the urban form, the figure of data has remained implicit yet subdued as as an entry point to study the idea of smart cities. Even for commentators who do focus on the implications of data, the category is often treated as a feature or a capacity of new technological assemblages. Instead, I argue in this paper that it is the concerns of production, circulation, and ownership of data that drive the conceptualisation and actual material forms of the visions of smart cities. These technological assemblages, materialisation of which constitute such visions, are implementations of exclusive data collection operations targeting various portions of urban lives and processes. The imagination of 'city 2.0' takes a particularly insightful colour when thought of as an analogy to the 'web 2.0' model of capture and monetisation of user behaviour data. Further, I employ the Marxian theory of 'primitive accumulation' to describe how the material infrastructures of networked sensors and embedded data capture systems create enclosed spaces for conversion of collectively-held-information into data-as-exchangable-and-interoperable-value, through which disparate and distributed knowledge and experiences of the urban is transformed into urban data, which can be centralised and queried, and hence value can be extracted from it.

Footnotes

[1] Lovink, Geert. 2013. Interview with German Media Archeologist Wolfgang Ernst. Nettime-l. February 26. Accessed on April 20, 2015, from http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0302/msg00132.html.

[2] Sassen, Saskia. 2012. Urbanising Technology. LSE Cities. December. Accessed on April 20, 2015, from http://lsecities.net/media/objects/articles/urbanising-technology/en-gb/.

[3] Dodge, Martin, and Rob Kitchin. 2005. Code and the Transduction of Space. Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 95: 01. Pp. 162-180.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/smart-cities-and-the-primitive-accumulation-of-data-abstract

Marathi Wikipedia Projects

sumandro — 2015-12-15T08:46:23Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/marathi-wikipedia

Mapping Digital Labour in India

sumandro — 2019-07-20T15:22:01Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/mapping-digital-labour

Manuel Beltrán - IoHO - April 01, 2019

sumandro — 2019-04-01T07:57:29Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/CIS_RAW_20190404_ManuelBeltran.png

Manuel Beltrán - IoHO

sumandro — 2019-04-01T06:06:42Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/ManuelBeltran_IoHO.jpg

Manuel Beltrán - Institute of Human Obsolescence - Cartographies of Dispossession

sumandro — 2019-04-01T08:00:05Z

Join us at the Delhi office of CIS on Thursday, April 4, at 5 pm for a talk by Manuel Beltrán, founder of the Institute of Human Obsolescence (IoHO), which explores the future of labour and the changing relationship between humans and machine. Cartographies of Dispossession (CoD), their current project at IoHO, explores the forms of systematic data dispossession that different humans are subject to, and investigates how data becomes both the means of production as much as the means of governance.

Image credit: Manuel Beltrán

Institute of Human Obsolescence - Cartographies of Dispossession

The Institute of Human Obsolescence (IoHO) explores the future of labour and the changing relationship between humans and machine. Our work develops from a scenario in which forms of manual and intellectual labour traditionally performed by humans are increasingly automated by new technologies. In this context we investigate and challenge the socio-political and economic implications of new forms of labour, such as the production of data. The IoHO developed several projects exploring the production of data as a form of labour, as a different paradigm through which to interrogate and challenge dynamics of ownership over the production of data and the economic and governance objects emerging through it. Previous lines of inquiry around the framework of Data Labour Rights include Data Basic Income, Data Cooperative, Data Production Labour series, Investigative Discussion Sessions and Data Workers Union.

In this talk founder of the IoHO Manuel Beltrán, will introduce the work of the IoHO and discuss their current project Cartographies of Dispossession (CoD). CoD explores the forms of systematic data dispossession that different humans are subject to, and investigates how data becomes both the means of production as much as the means of governance. The project looks at the implications of how the dispossession of data unequally occurs in different contexts, through different means and for different purposes.

Instruments such as the Right Of Access provided by GDPR emerge from a European context but the flows of data operate in a transnational scale. We are exploring the potential and limits of this instrument in combination with others such as the Right To Information in India as tools to investigate and repossess our production of data across borders. We are particularly interested in feedback and discussing in how to think further about this last part.

Manuel Beltrán

Manuel is an artist and activist. He researches and lectures on contemporary art, activism, contemporary social movements, post-digital culture and new media. As an activist, he was involved in the Indignados movement in Spain, the Gezi Park protests in Turkey and several forms of independent activism and cyber-activism in Europe and beyond. In 2012 he co-founded the art collective Plastic Crowds and since 2013 he is head and co-founder of the nomadic school and artistic organization Alternative Learning Tank. In 2015 he founded the Institute of Human Obsolescence, through which he explores the future of labour, the social and political implications regarding our relationship with technology and the economic and governance systems surrounding the production of data.

http://speculative.capital

https://dataworkers.org

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/manuel-beltran-ioho-cartographies-of-dispossession

Mahima Taneja and Nayantara Mohan Nanda - Data Collection in the Development Sector: Field Insights, Challenges, and Innovations (Delhi, October 06, 5 pm)

sumandro — 2017-10-05T06:01:04Z

It is our priviledge to announce that Mahima Taneja and Nayantara Mohan Nanda of Outline India are the speakers at the #FirstFridayAtCIS talk this month. Mahima will share her experience and anecdotes from the field, highlighting challenges and key concerns related to data collection in the Indian landscape, and the need for integrating qualitative components in evaluation designs. Nayantara will talk about Outline India's upcoming evaluation platform for creating transparency and enhancing accountability of key actors in the development sector. If you are joining us, please RSVP at the soonest as we have only limited space in our office.

Mahima Taneja

Senior Research Associate, Outline India

Mahima Taneja is an experienced researcher in mixed-method research design and evaluation projects. She has worked in the capacity of the key researcher for multiple projects and evaluation studies at Outline India in sectors including gender, WASH, Adolescent SRH, education, infrastructure mapping and urban planning. She has undertaken and managed extensive fieldwork for projects based out of Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Bihar, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Delhi.

Some of her projects include evaluation of WASH infrastructure across government schools; exploring hand hygiene practices in rural India; formative evaluation of awareness and practices around SRH among Mahadalit adolescents and piloting use of UAVs for infrastructure mapping and policy making.

She has completed her MA and M.Phil in Political Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Nayantara Mohan Nanda

Research Analyst, Outline India

Nayantara Mohan Nanda is a Researcher at Outline India. She works on building innovative solutions for data collection and is currently supporting the development of the monitoring and evaluation platform for Outline India.

Her experience in research is varied, having worked in areas of displacement, resettlement and rehabilitation, agri-horticulture, rural livelihoods, marginal ecologies, agriculture and education. She has done extensive fieldwork in Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh.

She recently completed her M.A. in Development Studies from Ambedkar University, Delhi.

RSVP

Location

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/firstfridayatcis-mahima-taneja-and-nayantara-mohan-nanda-data-collection-in-the-development-sector-delhi-oct-06

Madan Oberoi

sumandro — 2017-04-04T11:59:27Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/copy_of_madanoberoi.jpg

Madan Oberoi

sumandro — 2017-04-04T11:59:00Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/madanoberoi.jpg

Life of a Tuple: National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Reform of Citizen Identification Infrastructure in Assam

sumandro — 2023-04-27T16:54:24Z

We are proud to announce that a research grant from the Azim Premji University has enabled us to initiate a study of the updation process of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, and the resultant reform of citizen identification infrastructure in India. The study is being led by Khetrimayum Monish and Ranjit Singh, along with Sumandro Chattapadhyay.

The research focuses on two specific aspects of the NRC update:

Challenges of legal citizenship: In this context, we will investigate the constitutional acts and provisions for making citizenship claims in India, the historical narratives of identity politics in Assam and its culmination in the exercise of updating the NRC.

Challenges of procedurally implementing the NRC update: Here, we plan to explore the subsequent design process of updating the register.

Starting with the first aspect of legally defining Indian citizenship, the project will document and discuss the various legal processes of defining the bureaucratic process of updating NRC that emerge along two sets of concerns at different levels of Indian government. First, at the state level, we will explore the socio-political tensions around illegal immigration from Bangladesh and the history of identity-based politics in Assam. Second, at the level of the central government, we plan to investigate the constitutional and legal rules and provisions that are used to define citizenship in India.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/life-of-a-tuple-nrc-assam-citizen-identification-infrastructure

Life of a Tuple - NRC in Assam

sumandro — 2018-01-22T10:50:54Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/life-of-a-tuple

Learning

sumandro — 2015-10-05T14:55:54Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/learning

Launch of Silicon Plateau Vol-1

sumandro — 2015-11-26T04:32:41Z

Please join us on Friday, November 27, 2015 at 6.30 pm for the book launch of Silicon Plateau Vol-1.

Born from a collaboration with or-bits.com and the Researchers at Work (RAW) programme at the Centre for Internet and Society, Silicon Plateau is the first volume of a publishing series aimed at observing how the arts, technology and society intersect in the city of Bangalore. Guided by our belief in the importance of understanding technologies in their specificity rather than their universality, Silicon Plateau presents observations emerging from the personal experiences and perspectives of a variety of contemporary artists, writers and researchers, national and international, who either live in or have spent a period of time in the city, or have just crossed paths with its communities.

Silicon Plateau Vol–1 features works by Abhishek Hazra, IOCOSE, Tara Kelton, Anil Menon, Achal Prabhala, Sunita Prasad, Sreshta Rit Premnath, Renuka Rajiv, Anja Gollor & Mirko Merkel, and Christoph Schäfer.

VENUE: T.A.J. Residency, No. 21 (New No. 53), 2nd Cross, Wheeler Road Extension, Cooke Town, Bangalore, 560084.

PLEASE NOTE: Coming from Pottery road up to Wheeler Road Extension there are three roads called 2nd Cross. Take the third one on the right-hand side, just after D'Costa Café. The road is also marked with a blue sign for CCBI. Also note that our building does not have parking.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/launch-of-silicon-plateau-vol-1