Centre for Internet and Society

Radhika Radhakrishnan

sumandro — 2019-05-31T09:19:37Z

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Publications

sumandro — 2015-10-25T03:49:47Z

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Protecting the Territory, Killing the Map

sumandro — 2016-05-17T10:37:14Z

The politics of making and using maps in India has taken a sudden and complex turn with the publication of the draft Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, 2016. Contrary to the expectations arising out of several government schemes that are promoting the development of the new digital economy in India – from start-ups to the ongoing expansion of connectivity network – the Bill seems to be undoing various economic and humanitarian efforts, and other opportunities involving maps. This article by Sumandro Chattapadhyay and Adya Garg was published by The Wire on May 16, 2016.

Published by and cross-posted from The Wire.

The global history of cartography is intimately linked with political needs and economic interests, from the public depiction of sovereign territories to navigating treacherous seas to (wrongly) ‘discover’ the land of spices. In India, the politics of making and using maps has taken a sudden and complex turn with the publication of the draft Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, 2016. Contrary to the expectations arising out of several government schemes that are promoting the development of the new digital economy in India – from start-ups to the ongoing expansion of connectivity network – the Bill seems to be undoing various economic and humanitarian efforts, and other opportunities involving maps, by imposing strict guidelines and harsh penalties on the use of maps by private actors, commercial or otherwise.

The introductory note to the Bill clearly states its primary objective is to ensure the protection of ‘security, sovereignty and integrity of India.’ The concern around ‘security’ is not new when it comes to regulating cartographic activities. It is prominently addressed across the current set of policies and guidelines that govern mapping in India: 1) the National Map Policy, 2005 (“NMP”) and associated guidelines issued by the Survey of India, 2) the Remote Sensing Data Policy, 2011 that regulates satellite-based mapping, and 3) the Civil Aviation Requirement, 2012, which regulates mapping and photography using flights and drones. Protection of ‘sovereignty and integrity,’ however, does not find a mention in any of these map-related policies.

There have of course been several incidents where the government has taken steps (including the temporary blocking of service) against companies that have represented Indian national boundaries that are not in accordance with official maps. Such companies include Google, The Economist, and Al Jazeera. Two companies that have gotten away with no consequences after publicly showing maps of India without certain border regions, interestingly, are Facebook and CCTV.

In the absence of such provisions in the existing map-related policies, thus far, the government has pursued legal action against such ‘anti-national’ depiction of Indian territory under Section 69A of the IT Act, 2000, the Official Secrets Act, 1923 (restricting the collection and sharing of information about ‘prohibited places’), the Customs Act, 1962 (prohibiting the export and import of certain maps), and the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 1990.

Though this present Bill has come into public attention rather suddenly, the Indian State has been planning for a comprehensive legal framework for both enabling and restricting mapping, since the coming of the NMP itself. The first avatar of this effort was the Indian Survey Act that was heard about in 2007, but was never made public. More recently, the first report towards the National Geospatial Information Policy (now called the National Geospatial Policy) came out in 2012. Instead of waiting for this comprehensive policy to be discussed and notified, the Bill seems to have come in a hurry to propose a narrowly designed legal instrument. As is often the problem with such precise devices that also want to be exhaustive, the Bill promises much more collateral damage than actual solutions – it ends up killing the map in the name of protecting the territory.

A quick look at case law on map-related disputes informs us about the motivations of the state in enacting this Bill. A major controversy around ‘sovereignty’ in the field of mapping has been about the depiction of international boundaries of India by Google. After several incidents of conflicts between Google’s map makers and the Indian State regarding the depiction of India’s national boundary, the Survey of India filed a police complaint in 2014. As a result, Google presently shows different map tiles to users from India (according to the boundary specified by the Indian State) and different tiles to users from elsewhere. This geo-targeted solution to the depiction of international borders under dispute has been practiced by Google in the case of other countries too, most notably for Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ukraine and (independent) Crimea.

The internal security concerns have also fuelled conflicts with mapping companies. In 2013, the ‘mapathon’ organised by Google faced a lawsuit for not asking for prior permission from the Survey of India for this exercise in user-contributed mapping. This was preceded by a petition filed by J. Mohanraj in the Madras High Court seeking a complete ban on the Google Earth and Bhuvan (run by ISRO) map applications on the ground that they were both providing information that could be used for planning acts of terror. The petitioner’s argument referred to the provisions of the NMP, and also alleged that such mapping practices violated the individual rights of a person under Article 21 of the Constitution. The court, however, held (2008) that the petitioner was unable to produce any specific “Guidelines/Rules/Law laid down by the Central/State Governments, prohibiting the private organisations or any other individuals to Interactive Mapping Program, covering vast majority of the Planet”.

The trouble with Google re-opened earlier this year as the Pathankot air base was attacked. Incidentally, Vishal Saini, the winner of the 2013 mapathon by Google, contributed to mapping the features of the very same city. Promptly after the attack in January, Lokesh Kumar Sharma filed a case in the Delhi High Court alleging that the availability of sensitive information (from an internal security point-of-view) on Google Maps created security vulnerabilities. In a rather curious manner, the court disposed of the case on February 24, claiming that it has learned from the Additional Solicitor General that ‘steps are in progress to regulate the publication of aerial/satellite geospatial data.’ In hindsight, we see that this was in reference to the draft Bill.

This Bill, evidently, is a product of the Indian State’s inefficient attempts at regulating the making and circulation of maps and geospatial data in digital times. The Bill ends up disregarding the actual features of digital geospatial data and how it forms a fundamental basis (and asset) for today’s digital economy, and, instead, decides to settle for a form of regulation that is much better suited (if at all) to a pre-digital and pre-liberalisation condition. The regulatory measures proposed by the Bill do not only cause worry but also bewilderment. Take for example Section 3 that states that ‘no person shall acquire geospatial imagery or data including value addition of any part of India’ without being expressly given permission for the same or being vetted by the nodal agency set up by the Bill. If implemented strictly, this may mean that you will have to ask for permission and/or security vetting before dropping a pin on the map and sharing your coordinates with your friend or a taxi service. Both involve creating/acquiring geospatial information, and potentially adding value to the map/taxi service as well.

Let’s take an even more bizarre hypothetical situation – the Security Vetting Agency being asked to go through the entire geospatial data chest of Google everyday (or as soon as it is updated) and it taking up to ‘ three months from the date of receipt’ of the data to complete this checking so that Google Maps can tell you how crowded a particular street was three months ago.

Further, a key term that the Bill does not talk about is ‘big data.’ The static or much-slowly-changing geospatial data such as national boundaries and which-military-institute-is-located-where are really the tiny minority of the global geospatial information. The much larger and crucial part is of course the fast-moving big geospatial data – from geo-referenced tweets, to GPS systems of cars, to mobile phones moving through the cities and regions. Addressing such networked data systems, where all data can quite easily be born-georeferenced, and the security and privacy concerns that are engendered by them, should be the ultimate purpose of, and challenge for, a future-looking Geospatial Information Regulation Act.

The present Bill imposes an undesirable bureaucratic structure of licenses and permits upon the GIS industry in the country in particular, and on all sections of the economy using networked devices in general. This will only end up restricting the size of the GIS industry to a few dominant players. For all creators and users of maps for non-commercial, developmental, and humanitarian interests, this Bill appears to be an imminent threat, even if it is never actually applied.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/protecting-the-territory-killing-the-map

Pre-Budget Consultation 2016 - Submission to the IT Group of the Ministry of Finance

sumandro — 2016-01-12T13:34:41Z

The Ministry of Finance has recently held pre-budget consultations with different stakeholder groups in connection with the Union Budget 2016-17. We were invited to take part in the consultation for the IT (hardware and software) group organised on January 07, 2016, and submit a suggestion note. We are sharing the note below. It was prepared and presented by Sumandro Chattapadhyay, with contributions from Rohini Lakshané, Anubha Sinha, and other members of CIS.

It is our distinct honour to be invited to submit this note for consideration by the IT Group of the Ministry of Finance, Government of India, as part of the pre-budget consultation for 2016-17.

The Centre for Internet and Society is (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with diverse abilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. We receive financial support from Kusuma Trust, Wikimedia Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, IDRC, and other donors.

We have divided our suggestions into the different topics that our organisation has been researching in the recent years.

Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) is the Basis for Digital India

We congratulate the policies introduced by the government to promote use of free/libre and open source software and that of open APIs for all e-governance projects and systems. This is not only crucial for the government to avoid vendor lock-in when it comes to critical software systems for governance, but also to ensure that the source code of such systems is available for public scrutiny and do not contain any security flaws.

We request the government to empower the implementation of these policies by making open sharing of source code a necessity for all software vendors hired by government agencies a necessary condition for awarding of tenders. The 2016-17 budget should include special support to make all government agencies aware and capable of implementing these policies, as well as to build and operate agency-level software repositories (with version controlling system) to host the source codes. These repositories may function to manage the development and maintenance of software used in e-governance projects, as well as to seek comments from the public regarding the quality of the software.

Use of FLOSS is not only important from the security or the cost-saving perspectives, it is also crucial to develop a robust industry of software development firms that specialise in FLOSS-based solutions, as opposed to being restricted to doing local implementation of global software vendors. A holistic support for FLOSS, especially with the government functioning as the dominant client, will immensely help creation of domestic jobs in the software industry, as well as encouraging Indian programmers to contribute to development of FLOSS projects.

An effective compliance monitoring and enforcement system needs to be created to ensure that all government agencies are Strong enforcement of the 2011 policy to use open source software in governance, including an enforcement task force that checks whether government departments have complied with this or not.

Open Data is a Key Instrument for Transparent Decision Making

With a wider set of governance activities being carried out using information systems, the government is increasingly acquiring a substantial amount of data about governance processes and status of projects that needs to be effectively fed back into the decision making process for the same projects. Opening up such data not only allows for public transparency, but also for easier sharing of data across government agencies, which reduces process delays and possibilities of duplication of data collection efforts.

We request the 2016-17 budget to foreground the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy and the Open Government Data Platform of India as two key enablers of the Digital India agenda, and accordingly budget for modernisation and reconfiguration of data collection and management processes across government agencies, so that those processes are made automatic and open-by-default. Automatic data management processes minimise the possibility of data loss by directly archiving the collected data, which is increasingly becoming digital in nature. Open-by-default processes of data management means that all data collected by an agency, once pre-recognised as shareable data (that is non-sensitive and anonymised), will be proactively disclosed as a rule.

Implementation of the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy has been hindered, so far, by the lack of preparation of a public inventory of data assets, along with the information of their collection cycles, modes of collection and storage, etc., by each union government agency. Specific budgetary allocation to develop these inventories will be crucial not only for the implementation of the Policy, but also for the government to get an extensive sense of data collected and maintained currently by various government agencies. Decisions to proactively publish, or otherwise, such data can then be taken based on established rules.

Availability of such open data, as mentioned above, creates a wider possibility for the public to know, learn, and understand the activities of the government, and is a cornerstone of transparent governance in the digital era. But making this a reality requires a systemic implementation of open government data practices, and various agencies would require targeted budget to undertake the required capacity development and work process re-engineering. Expenditure of such kind should not be seen as producing government data as a product, but as producing data as an infrastructure, which will be of continuous value for the years to come.

As being discussed globally, open government data has the potential to kickstart a vast market of data derivatives, analytics companies, and data-driven innovation. Encouraging civic innovations, empowered by open government data - from climate data to transport data - can also be one of the unique initiatives of budget 2016-17.

For maximising impact of opened up government data, we request the government to publish data that either has a high demand already (such as, geospatial data, and transport data), or is related to high-net-worth activities of the government (such as, data related to monitoring of major programmes, and budget and expenditure data for union and state governments).

Promotion of Start-ups and MSMEs in Electronics and IT Hardware Manufacturing

In line with the Make in India and Digital India initiatives, to enable India to be one of the global hubs of design, manufacturing, and exporting of electronics and IT hardware, we request that the budget 2016-17 focus on increasing flow of fund to start-ups and Medium and Small-Scale Manufacturing Enterprises (MSMEs) in the form of research and development grants (ideally connected to government, especially defense-related, spending on IT hardware innovation), seed capital, and venture capital.

Generation of awareness and industry-specific strategies to develop intellectual property regimes and practices favourable for manufacturers of electronics and IT hardware in India is an absolutely crucial part of promotion of the same, especially in the current global scenario. Start-ups and MSMEs must be made thoroughly aware of intellectual property concerns and possibilities, including limitations and exceptions, flexibilities, and alternative models such as open innovation.

We request the budget 2016-17 to give special emphasis to facilitation of technology licensing and transfer, through voluntary mechanisms as well as government intervention, such as compulsory licensing and government enforced patent pools.

Applied Mathematics Research is Fundamental for Cybersecurity

Recent global reports have revealed that some national governments have been actively involved in sponsoring distortion in applied mathematics research so as to introduce weaknesses in encryption standards used in for online communication. Instead of trying to regulate key-length or mandating pre-registration of devices using encryption, as suggested by the withdrawn National Encryption Policy draft, would not be able to address this core emerging problem of weak cybersecurity standards.

For effective and sustainable cybersecurity strategy, we must develop significant expertise in applied mathematical research, which is the very basis of cybersecurity standards development. We request the budget 2016-17 to give this topic the much-needed focus, especially in the context of the Digital India initiative and the upcoming National Encryption Policy.

Along with developing domestic research capacity, a more immediately important step for the government is to ensure high quality Indian participation in global standard setting organisations, and hence to contribute to global standards making processes. We humbly suggest that categorical support for such participation and contribution is provided through the budget 2016-17, perhaps by partially channeling the revenues obtained from spectrum auctions.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/pre-budget-consultation-2016-submission-to-the-ministry-of-finance

Pranav Manjesh Bidare

sumandro — 2018-08-21T08:50:36Z

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Praja - Enhancing Democracy Through Access to Open Data: What Are the Roles of Government and Civil Society? (Delhi, Sep 08)

sumandro — 2017-09-05T10:57:38Z

Open Government Data (OGD) is widely seen to be a key hallmark of contemporary democratic practice and is often linked to the passing of freedom of information legislation. OGD is a philosophy—and increasingly a set of policies—that promotes transparency, accountability and value creation by making government data available to all. Public bodies produce and commission huge quantities of data and information. By making their datasets available, public institutions become more transparent and accountable to citizens. By encouraging the use, reuse and free distribution of datasets, governments promote business creation and innovative, citizen-centric services. Praja is organising a symposium on "open data and civil society" on Friday, Sep 8, which is supported by European Union and Friedrich Naumann Stiftung fur die Freiheit. Sumandro Chattapadhyay (Research Director) will take part in this event as a speaker in the session on "data centric approach and role of stakeholders in the urban governance ecosystem."

Details

Date: Friday, September 08 2017, 9:30 am - 5:00 pm

Venue: Juniper Hall, India Habitat Centre (Entry from Gate 1)

Invitees: Government representatives, elected representatives, civil society organisation and media representatives.

Event Page: Facebook

Objectives

To study the intersectionality between transparency, accountability and consumption of data by stakeholders.
To explore opportunities for the civil society to simplify governance through access to data, privacy of stakeholders and to address challenges faced in data collection and analysis.

Outcomes

The takeaway from the seminar should be to develop the idea of achieving data literacy. The presenters after a detailed interaction should take away the following from the event:

Reflections on the use of Internet and technology as tools for better governance
Balance the development of open data and the strategies to use this data in terms of ownership and replication of data
Identify data sets which should be prioritised for release in order to maximise public value
Data Accessibility: Capitalize on the demand for democracy and transparency by making open data more accessible to the larger public

Sessions

Through sessions, the aim is to specifically investigate the role of civil society and media in this effort. The participants will deliberate on the above-mentioned objectives of the seminar.

Session I: Praja Foundation Website Launch

Session II: Data centric approach and role of stakeholders in the urban governance ecosystem

Session III: Open data-experiences; trends, challenges and opportunities, relationship between governance and data

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/praja-enhancing-democracy-through-access-to-open-data-what-are-the-roles-of-government-and-civil-society-delhi-sep-08

Practice

sumandro — 2015-10-05T15:13:26Z

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Posts

sumandro — 2016-03-30T11:09:35Z

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Posts

sumandro — 2015-09-13T10:41:28Z

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Platformisation of Domestic Work in India: Report (February 2020)

sumandro — 2020-02-17T07:21:17Z

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Pervasive Technologies

sumandro — 2015-11-19T05:15:16Z

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Pavan Santhosh

sumandro — 2018-08-21T06:55:41Z

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Pallavi Bedi

sumandro — 2019-08-13T11:29:28Z

Pallavi Bedi

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P. Vigneswara Ilavarasan, PhD - Broadband Access in India: Insights from a Demand Side Research (Delhi, August 04, 5 pm)

sumandro — 2017-08-03T07:19:23Z

It is our priviledge to announce that P. Vigneswara Ilavarasan, PhD will be the speaker for the August #FirstFriday event at the CIS office in Delhi. Dr. Ilavarasan is an Associate Professor at the Department of Management Studies in the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. Using a large scale demand side research undertaken at BharatNet pilot sites, Dr. Ilavarasan will discuss the status of broadband access in India. He shall highlight the efforts being made by the government and challenges in achieving the desired developmental outcomes. If you are joining us, please RSVP at the soonest as we have only limited space in our office.

P. Vigneswara Ilavarasan, PhD

Associate Professor, Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi

P. Vigneswara Ilavarasan (PhD - IIT Kanpur) researches and teaches about production and consumption of information and communication technologies (ICTs) with a special focus on India. His specific research interests are Information and Communication Technologies & Development (ICTD); Indian IT industry; and Social Media. He is an active contributor to the international journals and conferences of repute.

Dr. Ilavarasan has been a Visiting Research Fellow at United Nations University - School of Computing and Society (Macau). He is a recipient of the Outstanding Young Faculty Fellowship Award at IIT Delhi and Prof. M.N. Srinivas Memorial Prize of the Indian Sociological Society. He is also a Research Fellow at LIRNEasia, a regional ICT policy and regulation think tank. He has received large research grants from IDRC (Canada), Govt. of India, Oxford Analytica (UK), IPTS (European Commission) and IdeaCorp (Philippines).

Dr Ilavarasan had taught at Pondicherry Central University and Indian Institute of Management Rohtak, Indore and Amritsar. His present teaching interests include: Management Information Systems; E-Commerce; Social Media; Business / Market Research Methods; and ICTs, Development & Business.

Further details: http://web.iitd.ac.in/~vignes/.

RSVP

Location

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/events/firstfridayatcis-p-vigneswara-ilavarasan-phd-broadband-access-in-india-august-04

Oxblood Ruffin - Dharamsala

sumandro — 2015-08-17T08:11:43Z

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