Centre for Internet and Society

Rejuvenating India’s Rivers the Wiki Way

subodh — 2019-04-01T13:18:33Z

Tarun Bharat Sangh (TBS), an organisation working on rejuvenation of rivers in India, has began documentation of rivers on Wiki, especially to draw attention to and mitigate the crisis of toxic deposits facing more than 40 rivers in India. The work was started by Jal Biradari, TBS’s Maharashtra based group, in Sangli district with the help of the Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) team of CIS. Here is the report from the first pilot workshop conducted by CIS-A2K during 22-25 December 2018 at Tarun Bharat Sangh Ashram, in Alwar, Rajasthan.

Events details on Wikimedia meta page

The Workshop

As per a Government of India report 42 rivers in India are polluted with toxic heavy metal deposits in them. To mitigate this crisis Tarun Bharat Sangh (TBS), an organization working on rejuvenation of rivers in India began documentation of rivers on Wiki. The work was started by TBS’s Maharashtra based group Jal Biradari in Sangli district with the help of the Access to Knowledge team of CIS (CIS-A2K).

Realizing the potential of the project TBS decided to integrate this as training module in their capacity building workshops conducted at Bhikampura in Rajasthan. The first pilot workshop was conducted by CIS-A2K during 22-25 December 2018 at Tarun Bharat Sangh Ashram, Bhikampura, Alwar in Rajasthan for 34 participants from eight states of India. Dr. Rajendra Singh, Maulik Sisodiya and Subodh Kulkarni, CIS-A2K were the facilitators. The objectives behind organizing the workshop was to build an open knowledge resource on water related issues in all Indian languages, document the river basins of India, train volunteers working in the sector to work in Wikimedia projects, open street mapping exercises and photo walks along the river and post free content on Commons and Wikisource projects.

The documentation structure for river basin was decided through participatory process. The participants were divided into 6 groups for working on 6 river basins of Arvari district. The resource material available with TBS in the form of maps, reports, training booklets was used to prepare the schematic maps of each river basin. The water bodies such as ponds, manmade structures like dams were also listed.


Activists during the workshop conducted by TBS in Alwar, Rajasthan in December 2018

After this pre-work, the training on Wikipedia editing started. The participants worked in sandboxes first on their articles. The manual of style, giving offline and online references and categorisation were discussed and practiced on sandboxes. The Commons session started with elaborate discussion on copyrights, licenses and encyclopedic content. The images were uploaded on Commons and used in the articles. The articles in the sandboxes were presented by each working group. Taking into consideration various suggestions, appropriate modifications were done. The finished new articles and the additional content into existing articles were then moved in the main namespace of respective language Wikipedia. TBS has decided to re-license 30 books and training material on river in CC-BY-SA. Participants who attended the workshop have started contributing in various languages.

Participants' Feedback

“Rivers are essential for existence of life in land. Keeping its sanctity and health is very important. The Wikimedia workshop gave an insight on river pollution issues and the importance of reviving them. As Wikipedia is an open platform it can create a larger impact by reaching out to the society.” - Mrityunjay1010

“The wiki-workshop on "Rivers on Wiki" has been my maiden experience in the context of generalizing the knowledge for common good. The workshop gave me a lens to see the usage of Wikipedia in regional languages as a medium for environmental consciousness building as well as conservation. Wikipedia as a means for social audit was also another enriching experience in that workshop.” - Simantabharati

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/subodh-kulkarni-rejuvenating-indias-rivers-the-wiki-way

The city of Bhubaneswar is going Open

sailesh — 2019-03-07T11:41:16Z

The Openness movement is a concept or philosophy that is characterized by an emphasis on transparency, free and unrestricted access to knowledge and information. The movement across the world is trying to build on the interest of like-minded people and an urgent need of bringing new resources of knowledge for the benefit of people with a method of collaborative or cooperative management. Many successful projects such as OpenStreetMap, Github, Wikimedia projects are free, open for everyone and evolve both by contributions and review efforts by participant volunteers. Open Knowledge Projects across the world are embarking upon a silent revolution to change the way information and knowledge are consumed by people.

Bhubaneswar supporting the concept of Openness movement has joined as one of the ambassadors of the movement in the world by giving citizens the right to access the content online produced by the government and make use of the work. As the city turned 70-year-old as the capital of Odisha in April 2018, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik launched two websites — Bhubaneswar.me and Smart City Bhubaneswar under a Creative Commons license. The websites were made to provide visitor or tourist information about the city and to showcase various projects being undertaken as a part of the Smart City mission.

A visual walk-through video was released for the visit.Bhubaneswar.me and Smart City website over social media sites for the public to understand the features of the websites which ended saying “Knowledge now made more accessible”, anyone can use the content and data of the website under the campaign for Transparency in Governance. These websites have adopted Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license also known as CC-BY-4.0, which allows the citizens of Bhubaneswar to use the work of the government. Creative Commons licenses are a set of open licenses that are used worldwide to enable widen use and reuse of creative work that is otherwise restricted by the strict copyright laws. Currently, the majority of government websites under the Bhubaneswar administration are under an Open license.

Transparency is considered the traditional hallmark of an open government, meaning that the public should have access to government-held information and be informed of government proceedings, says an article from Opensource.com. Transparency, accountability, and participation are one of the needed conditions for the government to ensure that public resources are used efficiently, public policies are designed in the best interest of the population.

Though most of the government websites can be accessed online, the content of those sites are not open by default, the government has to adopt a specific license to open their content. In September 2017, Odisha became the first state in India to release all of its social media contents under a free license such as Creative Commons license, initially eight social media accounts of the state government were part of the project and followed by few other departments under the state government releasing their content under the same license. Because of this initiative by the government, currently, ten or more websites and eight social media accounts are allowing people from all around the world to freely reuse the state government’s work.

As the content of the websites is under a free license it creates an impact on a project like Wikipedia-one of the most popular websites in the world and the largest online encyclopedia available on the internet, committed to free and open copyright licenses from its earliest days on the internet. Currently, a near about files from the websites and social media accounts of the Government of Odisha are added into Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia’s sister site and an open multimedia repository, under a content donation program of which 70% of files are used in different Wikipedia articles, all of which together has received over 25 million page views in last 18 months.

Cities opening their data and content for the citizens encourages individuals for new innovation and to form new ideas that help to bridge the gap in the city. A report from Forbes in 2012 says Open city data can help app developers, urban planners, and others understand a city’s problems and manage city services in ways that improve the quality of life and business prospects for its residents. When Bhubaneswar led the way of promoting the Openness movement in India, there is a huge scope for the rest of the cities to adopt open licensing to make knowledge more accessible for the citizens and enhance public trust in government.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-city-of-bhubaneswar-is-going-open

CIS-A2K Finance Officer: Call for application

tito — 2019-03-07T08:46:29Z

The Access to Knowledge team of the Centre for Internet and Society is seeking applications for the position of Finance Officer, to support its Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) Programme. The job application is open to women only.

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) is seeking applications from prospective candidates who identify themselves as female, for the position of Finance Officer, to support its Access to Knowledge (CIS-A2K) Programme. The job application is open to women only because we feel that a woman Finance Officer will contribute more towards bridging the gender gap in the Wikimedia movement and also it will bring a gender balance in the team. The position is full time and will be based in CIS’ Bangalore office No. 194, 2nd ‘C’ Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru, 560071. Finance Officer will work closely with the CIS-A2K Team and would report to the Executive Director/any supervisor in Team.

Position Summary

As a Finance Officer, your job will be to support the A2K Programme and the community members in financial related aspects such as filing the reimbursements, maintaining the books of accounts etc.

Characteristics of the Programme Officer

High level of commitment: The Finance Officer should believe in the values of CIS and Wikimedia projects, exude enthusiasm for the mission and can powerfully embody and communicate the mission.
Intellectual curiosity and flexibility: Must enjoy tackling difficult, ambiguous problems and able to incorporate new knowledge into how one approaches situations and generates solutions, loves learning from others while expanding intellectual horizons.
Open and transparent: Have a high level of integrity and be comfortable working in a highly transparent fashion.
Strong cultural competency: Able to navigate in a global movement and on a global team in addition to navigating the complexity of India.
Willing to travel: The Finance Officer must regularly travel within India during the events to help the community members to file the reimbursements.

Responsibilities

You will be responsible for the overall finance-related aspects of Team that include maintaining the books of accounts, filing the reimbursements.
Assistance in book-keeping to include monthly expenditure, financial statements, accounts receivable, accounts payable, disbursement journal, trial balance, tax reports, etc.
Work in preparation of budgets, proposals, objectives, audits, annual reports.

Requirements

Prior experience of working in a collaborative community, preferably an open movement.
Must be fluent in English and at least in one Indian language.
Minimum of 1-year experience in clerical/bookkeeping/accounting field.
Ability and flexibility to deal with pressure and deadlines.
Good knowledge of formulas in excel sheets.
Basic knowledge of Tally software.

Wikimedians will be given priority.

Location: The position is based out of the CIS’s Bangalore office.

Remuneration: Compensation structure will be determined by the level of expertise, experience and current remuneration.

Contract period

Initial contract will be till 30 June 2019, following the current work-plan of the A2K team

Apply

To apply, please send your resume and cover letter to Tito Dutta (tito+fo@cis-india.org) (please do not miss the +fo part in the email address). The last date of application is 18 March 2019.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/cis-a2k-finance-officer-call-for-application

Train the Trainer program 2018

sailesh — 2019-03-06T08:13:05Z

Trainer the Trainer program is an annual three days residential program organised by the Access to Knowledge Program of Centre for Internet and Society. The program identifies the community leaders and brings Wikimedians from and around the SAARC countries to train them and provide mentorship in their work.

Train the Trainer 2018 was the 5th iteration of the Train the Trainer Program by the CIS-A2K. This year TTT was organised in the city of Mysore. The event was attended by 21 Wikimedians throughout the Indic language communities, including three foreign delegates from Bangladesh and Nepal. Like previous years, this year, TTT followed the pre-event session with ice breaker activities, which helped the Wikimedians to know each other, and interact with the fellow participants.

The day one of TTT 2018 began with a small round of formal introductions for participants who joined later, the idea of the introduction session was for the participants to share their area expertise and projects they are working on. We have always identified that during the free time participants interact with each other and talk about collaboration activities, so this session helps to know more about your fellow participants. We had a Master Class (Master Class 1) about the Pre and Post event best practices, for the participants to understand how to plan an an event and what should be the preworks before organising an event, we also had sessions on best practices for community members to write and review grant proposals and an introductory session on Wikidata.

The day two was a field trip (Master Class 2) to Sri Chamarajendra Zoological Gardens, a local zoo in Mysore. The intent of the field trip was to give exposure to the participants to learn in an open environment. Followed by the field trip, a session on Diversity initiatives was conducted to understand the challenges and opportunities of having a diverse community.

On the day three, the participants were introduced to a variety of Wikimedia events (Master Class 3) and a panel discussion by Wikimedia affiliates from India (WMF, Chapter, User-group and CIS-A2K) about the organisational structure and responsibilities. The aim of the panel was to help the participants to understand the structure of Wikimedia affiliates in Inda, to share the different kind of events and collaborations they can do with the affiliates. This year CIS-A2K introduced Revolving cafe for the participants to attend some parallel sessions related to Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons, Institutional Partnership, Support and Safety. The day was concluded with a lightning talk on Social media best practices, how affiliates and community member should use social media channels to promote their work. Subsequently, there was feedback and summing up session.

This year CIS-A2K made a few changes to the Train the Trainer program, for the first time the event was held out of Bangalore. We had invited a longtime Punjabi Wikimedian, a previous alumnus of TTT to externally audit the TTT 2018 being part of the team. Dr Manavpreet Kaur has provided a 10 points suggestion/feedback to the team which will be addressed in TTT 2019.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/train-the-trainer-program-2018

Talks by Richard Abisla and Kaliya Young

Admin — 2019-03-07T23:59:25Z

The Centre for Internet & Society will be hosting public talks by Richard Abisla and Kaliya Young, who are both 2019 India-U.S. Public Interest Technology Fellows at New America at its Bangalore office on March 4, 2019.

The event is over. Pictures of the speakers were posted on Twitter.

Agenda

4:30 - 5:10 p.m.: "Open Data from Below: Civil Society and Open Data" by Richard Abisla
5:10 - 5:50 p.m.: "Exploring the Domains of Identity and Emerging Open standards for Decentralized Identity" by Kaliya Young

The Talks

"Open Data from Below: Civil Society and Open Data" by Richard Abisla

Often NGOs and Civil Society Organizations' roles in the Open Data movement are considered to be solely last mile training with citizens. This talk will give examples from the TechSoup Global Network of how NGOs act to prioritize, organize, and create open data sets that can exist alongside official data sources, or become official government data. The talk will explore barriers to opening up data, both from within government and civil society, and possible solutions. For more info click here.

"Exploring the Domains of Identity and Emerging Open standards for Decentralized Identity" by Kaliya Young

In this seminar she will share two significant pieces of her work firstly the Domains of Identity that provides a clear picture of all the different domains individual's data ends up in databases. This can serve as the basis of a dialogue about the proper relationship between different domains. Secondly she has been at the heart of a community developing new Decentralized Identity Technology standards and will share more about them and how they can enable a many-to-many exchange of verifiable credentials between individuals and the institutions they interact with.

The Speakers

Richard Abisla

Richard Abisla is a 2019 India-U.S. Fellow at New America. Abisla is currently the Portfolio Manager for the Americas at Caravan Studios, a division of TechSoup. Abisla has a long history of working alongside local communities to help them access digital information and education and integrate technology into both their work and lives. He has created and directed technology education and adoption programs in Honduras, Jamaica, Chicago, and San Francisco, all the while focusing on increasing access to digital resources for those who need them most. Most recently, Abisla has focused on working with librarians and library users in Brazil to create applications and processes that help solve local problems through open data resources, as well as training librarians to integrate human-centered design principles into their work in order to plan more impactful programming.

Kaliya Young

Kaliya Young is a 2019 India-U.S. Fellow at New America. Young is one of the world’s leading experts on decentralized or self-sovereign identity technology. She is the author of A Comprehensive Guide to Self-Sovereign Identity and currently holds the position of adjunct professor at Merritt College where she is developing a curriculum about identity. For the last 15 years, she has worked within the industry to catalyze the formation of a new layer of the internet designed to serve individuals. She began sketching out distributed social networks in 2003 and co-founded the Internet Identity Workshop in 2005 with Doc Searls and Phil Windley. More details can be found here. She is also known as Identity Woman.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/events/talks-by-richard-abisla-and-kaliya-young

February 2019 Newsletter

Admin — 2019-03-14T16:40:12Z

Our newsletter for February month below.

The CIS newsletter aims to highlight developments in copyright and patent, free speech and expression, privacy, cyber security, telecom, etc. as well as Industry 4.0, big data, additive manufacturing and so on which are revolutionizing and moving the digital world forward. Through this newsletter we look to engage you with our research and build a strong bond by bringing you insightful articles and blog posts which will be beneficial for you and your business. Throughout the year we will send you stories and insights from our board, staff and community leaders. We welcome your feedback, suggestions or comments regarding our newsletter or any other aspect of our research.

Highlights for February 2019

Maharashtra is a state which is rich in diversity in terms of language and culture seen in its various regions such as Konkan, Marathwada, Western Maharashtra, Northern Maharashtra and Vidarbha. Awareness needs to be created to make Wikimedia movement inclusive and diverse in these geographical regions as well as in their social strata. Keeping this in view CIS-A2K conducted five workshops in different parts of the state.
Marathi language department of Goa University has initiated the process to document the culture of Goa on Marathi Wikipedia and Commons. Subodh Kulkarni reports this in a blog entry.
Khetrimayum Monish Singh and Rajiv K. Mishra co-authored a research paper which was presented at the Young Scholars International Conference on “Margins and Connections,” organised by the Special Centre for the Study of North East India, Jawaharlal Nehru University, on February 7-8, 2019.
Following consultations with data protection, civil society, industry and others, during the Cybercrime Convention Committee (T-CY) meeting from 29 November 2018 onwards, the Cybercrime Convention Committee had sought additional contributions regarding the provisional draft text for a Second Additional Protocol to the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime (“Budapest Convention”). Vipul Kharbanda submitted comments on behalf of CIS.
CIS responded to the call for submissions from the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Speech and Expression. The submission was on the Surveillance Industry and Human Rights.
CIS and University of Munich, Germany are co-organizing an event 'Internet Speech: Perspectives on Regulation and Policy' at India Habitat Centre on April 5, 2019.
Akriti Bopanna on behalf of CIS provided comments on the proposed draft of ICANN’s FY20 Operating Plan and Budget along with their Five-Year Operating Plan Update.
Harsh Bajpai, Ambika Tandon, and Amber Sinha have co-authored a case study 'The Future of Work in the Automotive Sector in India'. The case study highlights the impact of technologies such as artificial intelligence, industry 4.0, internet of things, and so on at industry workplace. The case study was edited by Rakhi Sehgal. Manav Mehta provided research assistance.
In a response to the Draft of The Information Technology [Intermediary Guidelines (Amendment) Rules] 2018, CIS examined whether the draft rules meet tests of constitutionality and whether they are consistent with the parent Act. The submission also examined potential harms that may arise from the Rules as they are currently framed and make recommendations to the draft rules that may enable government to meet its objectives while remaining situated within the constitutional ambit.
A UN high-level panel on Digital Cooperation issued a call for inputs that called for responses to various questions. CIS responded to the call for inputs. The response was drafted by Aayush Rathi, Ambika Tandon, Arindrajit Basu and Elonnai Hickok.

CIS and the News

The following news pieces were authored by CIS and published on its website in January:

Data Infrastructures and Inequities: Why Does Reproductive Health Surveillance in India Need Our Urgent Attention? (Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon; EPW Engage , Vol. 54, Issue No. 6, February 9, 2019).
Intermediary liability law needs updating (Sunil Abraham; Business Standard; February 9, 2019).
Resurrecting the marketplace of ideas (Arindrajit Basu; Hindu Businessline; February 22, 2019).
What I learned from going offline for 48 hours (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; February 24, 2019).

CIS in the News

CIS was quoted in these news articles published elsewhere:

Civil Liberties Groups Warn Proposed EU 'Terrorist Content' Rule a Threat to Democratic Values (Jessica Corbett; Common Dreams; February 5, 2019).
‘Willing to participate, but need more time’: Twitter on parliamentary panel hearing (Smriti Kak Ramachandran and Vidhi Choudhary; February 10, 2019).
What the government's draft IT intermediary guidelines say (Abhijit Ahaskar; Livemint; February 12, 2019).
Make our digital backyard safe (Nilanjana Bhowmick; Economic Times; February 13, 2019).
Even years later, Twitter doesn't delete your direct messages (Zack Whittaker and Natasha Lomas; Tech Crunch; February 15, 2019).
Are RSS's fears about Tik Tok true? Here's what you should know (Economic TimZack Whittaker and Natasha Lomases; February 20, 2019). Also published in Moneycontrol News on the same day.
Risk integration is key to better cybersecurity management (Dr. R. Seetharaman; Gulf Times; February 24, 2019).
Any failure to resolve the Kashmir problem could lead the South Asia to a nuclear disaster (Kashmir Watch; February 25, 2019).
Over 30 organisations, industry bodies oppose proposal to ban vape content (Times of India; February 28, 2019).
.

Access to Knowledge

Our Access to Knowledge programme currently consists of two projects. The Pervasive Technologies project, conducted under a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), aims to conduct research on the complex interplay between low-cost pervasive technologies and intellectual property, in order to encourage the proliferation and development of such technologies as a social good. The Wikipedia project, which is under a grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, is for the growth of Indic language communities and projects by designing community collaborations and partnerships that recruit and cultivate new editors and explore innovative approaches to building projects.

Wikipdedia

As part of the project grant from the Wikimedia Foundation we have reached out to more than 3500 people across India by organizing more than 100 outreach events and catalysed the release of encyclopaedic and other content under the Creative Commons (CC-BY-3.0) license in four Indian languages (21 books in Telugu, 13 in Odia, 4 volumes of encyclopaedia in Konkani and 6 volumes in Kannada, and 1 book on Odia language history in English).

Blog Entries

Marathi Wikipedia Workshop & 1lib1ref session at Goa University (Subodh Kulkarni; February 1, 2019).
Marathi Language Fortnight Workshops 2019 (Subodh Kulkarni February 26, 2019).

Media Coverage

Goa University students update ‘Goa’ Marathi articles on Wikipedia (Times of India; February 20, 2019).

Internet Governance

As part of its research on privacy and free speech, CIS is engaged with two different projects. The first one (under a grant from Privacy International and IDRC) is on surveillance and freedom of expression (SAFEGUARDS). The second one (under a grant from MacArthur Foundation) is on restrictions that the Indian government has placed on freedom of expression online.

Cyber Security

Submission

Comments on the Draft Second Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime (Budapest Convention) (Vipul Kharbanda; February 25, 2019).

Privacy

Submissions

CIS Submission to UN High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation (Aayush Rathi, Ambika Tandon, Arindrajit Basu and Elonnai Hickok; February 7, 2019).
CIS Submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Speech and Expression: Surveillance Industry and Human Rights (Elonnai Hickok, Arindrajit Basu, Gurshabad Grover, Akriti Bopanna, Shweta Mohandas and Martyna Kalvaityte; February 20, 2019).

Participation in Event

BIS LITD 17 (Organized by the Bureau of Indian Standards; February 26, 2019). Gurshabad Grover participated in the meeting conducted online.

Gender

Workshop Organized

Unbox Festival 2019: CIS organizes two Workshops (Organized by CIS; Bangalore; February 15 - 17, 2019). CIS organized two workshops on What is your Feminist Infrastructure Wishlist? and AI for Good.

Participation in Events

Imagine a Feminist Internet: Research, Practice and Policy in South Asia (Organized by Internet Democracy Project and Point of View; Sri Lanka; February 21 - 22, 2019). Ambika Tandon was a speaker and presented a paper 'Framing Reproductive Health as a Data Problem? Unpacking ‘Dataveillance’ in India' which was co-authored by herself and Aayush Rathi.
Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN) Convening Design (Organized by Association for Progressive Communications; Malaysia; February 27 - March 1, 2019). Ambika Tandon attended the event.

Free Speech and Expression

Submissions

Response to the Draft of The Information Technology [Intermediary Guidelines (Amendment) Rules] 2018 (Gurshabad Grover, Elonnai Hickok, Arindrajit Basu and Akriti Bopanna; February 7, 2019).
CIS Comment on ICANN's Draft FY20 Operating Plan and Budget (Akriti Bopanna; February 12, 2019).

Upcoming Event

Internet Speech: Perspectives on Regulation and Policy (Organized by CIS and the University of Munich (LMU), Germany; India Habitat Centre, New Delhi; April 5, 2019).

Participation in Event

Webinar on counter-comments to the draft Intermediary Guidelines (Organized by CCAOI and the ISOC Delhi Chapter; February 11, 2019). Gurshabad Grover attended the event.

Artificial Intelligence

Case Study

The Future of Work in the Automotive Sector in India (Harsh Bajpai, Ambika Tandon and Amber Sinha; February 8, 2019). Case study was edited by Rakhi Sehgal.

Participation in Event

2019 International Asia Conference (Organized by ITECHLAW; Bangalore; January 31 - February 1, 2019). Sunil Abraham was a panelist in the session "Policy Making for the Emerging Tech in India".

Researchers at Work (RAW)

The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme is an interdisciplinary research initiative driven by an emerging need to understand the reconfigurations of social practices and structures through the Internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa. It aims to produce local and contextual accounts of interactions, negotiations, and resolutions between the Internet, and socio-material and geo-political processes:

Research Paper

Media Infrastructures and Digital Practices: Case Studies from the North East of India (Khetrimayum Monish Singh; February 5, 2019).

About CIS

The Centre for Internet and Society (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 disabilities, 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. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Follow us elsewhere

Twitter: http://twitter.com/cis_india
Twitter - Access to Knowledge: https://twitter.com/CISA2K
Twitter - Information Policy: https://twitter.com/CIS_InfoPolicy
Facebook - Access to Knowledge: https://www.facebook.com/cisa2k
E-Mail - Access to Knowledge: a2k@cis-india.org
E-Mail - Researchers at Work: raw@cis-india.org
List - Researchers at Work: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers

► Support Us

Please help us defend consumer and citizen rights on the Internet! Write a cheque in favour of 'The Centre for Internet and Society' and mail it to us at No. 194, 2nd 'C' Cross, Domlur, 2nd Stage, Bengaluru - 5600 71.

► Request for Collaboration

We invite researchers, practitioners, artists, and theoreticians, both organisationally and as individuals, to engage with us on topics related internet and society, and improve our collective understanding of this field. To discuss such possibilities, please write to Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, at sunil@cis-india.org (for policy research), or Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Research Director, at sumandro@cis-india.org (for academic research), with an indication of the form and the content of the collaboration you might be interested in. To discuss collaborations on Indic language Wikipedia projects, write to Tanveer Hasan, Programme Officer, at tanveer@cis-india.org.

CIS is grateful to its primary donor the Kusuma Trust founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin for its core funding and support for most of its projects. CIS is also grateful to its other donors, Wikimedia Foundation, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and IDRC for funding its various projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/february-2019-newsletter

Marathi Language Fortnight Workshops 2019

subodh — 2019-03-01T00:39:33Z

Maharashtra is a state which is rich in diversity in terms of language and culture seen in its various regions such as Konkan, Marathwada, Western Maharashtra, Northern Maharashtra and Vidarbha. Awareness needs to be created to make Wikimedia movement inclusive and diverse in these geographical regions as well as in their social strata.

Collaboration for organizing events

The Centre for Internet & Society’s Access to Knowledge wing (CIS-A2K) launched the concept of organizing state-wide workshops to spread awareness and train editors in the nitty-gritties of Wikipedia editing and creating digital content. The campaign is now regularly conducted by Rajya Marathi Vikas Sanstha (RMVS), the language department of Maharashtra government with support from CIS-A2K and various institutions.

These events were conducted during the Marathi language fortnight (1 – 15 January 2019) upto Marathi Language Day on 27 February 2019. The objectives of the event such as creating awareness about digital knowledge in Marathi, open knowledge resources and Wikimedia projects; explaining the history of Wiki movement; training participants in basic editing skills in Wikipedia; exploring ways to find reliable references; presenting article structure, were broadly covered in the sessions. Trainers also explained participants on copyright, community guidelines, uploading images, and so on.

CIS-A2K had collaborated with the state language department from 2017 onwards. In the first series of workshops, three events were conducted. In the second series in 2018 six workshops out of a total 17 workshops were conducted across the state. In the year 2019, the awareness spread to more educational institutions located in different regions of the state. In the third series, CIS-A2K conducted five workshops out of total 21 workshops conducted. CIS facilitated the process and supported some workshops remotely.

The Workshops

The first workshop was conducted at Chintamanrao College of Commerce at Sangli. The awareness session about open knowledge sources and Wikimedia projects was organized for students and faculty in the beginning of workshop. After this one hour session, actual skill training in Wikipedia editing was done for three hours for 24 participants. They created the account and learnt the editing and image upload on Commons. The practice was done in sandboxes before working in main namespace. The students of pre-university course and graduate course attended the workshop. The commerce and management related articles were edited.

The second workshop was conducted at Shivaji University, Kolhapur. The Marathi language department took the initiative to organize this workshop for the second consecutive year. The participants were selected from 4 colleges affiliated to university. The faculty was also actively involved. The introductory session was attended by 50 students. The editing training of three hours was conducted in computer lab, in which 24 new users participated. The editors practiced the manual of style, providing links and references, etc. on their sandboxes before working on the main namespace articles. The editors mostly worked on locally relevant topics.

The third workshop was conducted in Dayanand College at Solapur. This institution organized this event for the second consecutive year. The thematic discussion on history of Solapur was facilitated by a senior editor of Sakal newspaper. The plan for documentation of local festival - Gadda Yatra and history of Solapur was discussed. It is proposed to start this activity with thematic workshop. Total 15 new and old users participated in the workshop.

The fourth workshop was conducted at Mass Communication & Journalism department of Solapur University. The faculty of this department took the initiative to organize this event for the second time. Total 25 new and old users participated in the workshop. The participants edited the articles related to journalism and also uploaded the images on Commons. Some editors completed the task of adding references to articles. After the meeting with the faculty, group of post graduate students were assigned 50 articles about reputed Marathi newspapers. They will complete this task as part of their online academic submissions.

The fifth wokshop was conducted at SSSKR Innani College at Karanja Lad in district Washim. This was the first Wikipedia programme in this region of the state. As it was the first Wiki event, we decided to organise a two day workshop. The management and faculty participated actively in this workshop. In the workshop, references and images were added to existing articles about local heritage, tourist places and personalities. The images were uploaded to newly created categories - Karanja Lad and SSSKR Innani College on Commons. Over 100 members participated in this two day event, while 45 users edited actively on Wikimedia projects.

Follow-up

After the workshop, quarterly refresher sessions are planned in these institutions. The active students' WhatsApp groups will be formed for support and online training sessions. This cadre of Wiki Guides would facilitate the programs for other students. The meeting with faculty and board of studies would be held for integration of Wikimedia activities with the academic assignments.

More info check out the Meta report.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-language-fortnight-workshops-2019

Comments on the Draft Second Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime (Budapest Convention)

vipul — 2019-02-25T16:48:18Z

Following consultations with data protection, civil society, industry and others, during the Cybercrime Convention Committee (T-CY) meeting from 29 November 2018 onwards, the Cybercrime Convention Committee has sought additional contributions regarding the provisional draft text for a Second Additional Protocol to the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime (“Budapest Convention”).

The Centre for Internet and Society, (“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, and open access), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, artificial intelligence, freedom of expression, and cyber-security. This submission is consistent with CIS’ commitment to safeguarding general public interest, and the rights of stakeholders. CIS is thankful to the Cybercrime Convention Committee for this opportunity to provide feedback to the Draft.

The draft text addresses three issues viz. language of requests, emergency multilateral cooperation and taking statements through video conferencing. Click to download the entire submission here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/vipul-kharbanda-february-25-2019-comments-on-draft-second-protocol-to-convention-on-cybercrime-budapest-convention

Comments on the Draft Second Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime (Budapest Convention)

vipul — 2019-02-25T16:43:43Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/comments-on-the-draft-second-protocol-to-the-convention-on-cybercrime-budapest-convention

Call for submissions: The Surveillance Industry and Human Rights.pdf

karan — 2019-02-20T10:46:58Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/resources/the-surveillance-industry-and-human-rights.pdf

Submission to UN High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation

Admin — 2019-02-19T00:55:04Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/submission-to-un-high-level-panel-on-digital-cooperation

Civil Liberties Groups Warn Proposed EU 'Terrorist Content' Rule a Threat to Democratic Values

Admin — 2019-02-19T00:49:00Z

Requiring filtering tools would be "a gamble with European Internet users' rights to privacy and data protection, freedom of expression and information, and non-discrimination and equality before the law."

The blog post by Jessica Corbett was published by Common Dreams on February 5, 2019. Centre for Internet & Society was a signatory.

Dozens of human rights groups and academics have signed on to an open letter (pdf) raising alarm about the European Union's proposed Regulation on Preventing the Dissemination of Terrorist Content Online, warning that its call for Internet hosts to employ "proactive measures" to censor such content "will almost certainly lead platforms to adopt poorly understood tools" at the expense of democratic values across the globe.

One of those tools is the Hash Database developed by Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft, and Twitter. The 13 companies that use the database—which supposedly contains 80,000 images and videos—can automatically filter out material deemed "extreme" terrorist content. However, as the letter explains, "almost nothing is publicly known about the specific content that platforms block using the database, or about companies' internal processes or error rates, and there is insufficient clarity around the participating companies' definitions of 'terrorist content.'"

"Countering terrorist violence is a shared priority, and our point is not to question the good intentions of the database operators. But lawmakers and the public have no meaningful information about how well the database or any other existing filtering tool serves this goal, and at what cost to democratic values and individual human rights," notes the letter, whose signatories include the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Brennan Center for Justice, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the European Digital Rights (EDRi).

As an EDRi statement outlines, among the groups' main concerns are the following:

Lack of transparency of how the database works, and its effectiveness, proportionality, and appropriateness to achieve the goals the Terrorist Content Regulation aims to achieve;
How filters are unable to understand the context and therefore they are error-prone; and
Regardless of the possibility of filters to be accurate in the future, the pervasive online monitoring on disadvantaged and marginalized individuals.

Given the uncertainties over the effectiveness and societal costs of such tools, the letter charges that "requiring all platforms to use black-box tools like the database would be a gamble with European Internet users' rights to privacy and data protection, freedom of expression and information, and non-discrimination and equality before the law."

With those fundamental rights under threat, the groups are calling on members of the European Parliament "to reject proactive filtering obligations; provide sound, peer-reviewed research data supporting policy recommendations and legal mandates around counter-terrorism; and refrain from enacting laws that will drive Internet platforms to adopt untested and poorly understood technologies to restrict online expression."

Read the full letter:

Dear Members of the European Parliament,

The undersigned organizations write to share our concerns about the EU’s proposed Regulation on Preventing the Dissemination of Terrorist Content Online, and in particular the Regulation’s call for Internet hosts to use “proactive measures” to detect terrorist content. We are concerned that if this Regulation is adopted, it will almost certainly lead platforms to adopt poorly understood tools, such as the Hash Database referenced in the Explanatory Memorandum to the Regulation and currently overseen by the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism. Countering terrorist violence is a shared priority, and our point is not to question the good intentions of the Database operators. But lawmakers and the public have no meaningful information about how well the Database or any other existing filtering tool serves this goal, and at what cost to democratic values and individual human rights. We urge you to reject proactive filtering obligations; provide sound, peer-reviewed research data supporting policy recommendations and legal mandates around counter-terrorism; and refrain from enacting laws that will drive Internet platforms to adopt untested and poorly understood technologies to restrict online expression.

The Database was initially developed by Facebook, YouTube, Microsoft, and Twitter as a voluntary measure, and announced to the public in 2016. It contains digital hash “fingerprints” of images and4videos that platforms have identified as “extreme” terrorist material, based not on the law but on their own Community Guidelines or Terms of Service. The platforms can use automated filtering tools to identify and remove duplicates of the hashed images or videos. As of 2018, the Database was said to contain hashes representing over 80,000 images or videos. At least thirteen companies now use the Database, and some seventy companies have reportedly discussed adopting it.

Almost nothing is publicly known about the specific content that platforms block using the Database, or about companies’ internal processes or error rates, and there is insufficient clarity around the participating companies’ definitions of “terrorist content.” Furthermore, there are no reports about how many legal processes or investigations were opened after the content was blocked. This data would be crucial to understand to what extent the measures are effective and necessary in a democratic society, which are some of the sine qua non requisites for restrictions of fundamental rights. We do know, however, of conspicuous problems that seemingly result from content filtering gone awry. The Syrian Archive, a civil society organization preserving evidence of human rights abuses in Syria, for example, reports that YouTube deleted over 100,000 of its videos. Videos and other content which may be used in one context to advocate terrorist violence may be essential elsewhere for news reporting, combating terrorist recruitment online, or scholarship. Technical filters are blind to these contextual differences. As three United Nations special rapporteurs noted in a December 2018 letter, this problem raises serious concerns about free expression rights under the proposed Regulation. It is far from clear whether major platforms like YouTube or Facebook adequately correct for this through employees’ review of filtering decisions—and it seems highly unlikely that smaller platforms could even attempt to do so, if required to use the Database or other filtering tools.

Failures of this sort seriously threaten Internet users’ rights to seek and impart information. The pervasive monitoring that platforms carry out in order to filter users’ communications also threatens privacy and data protection rights. Moreover, these harms do not appear to be equally distributed, but instead disproportionately disadvantage individual Internet users based on their ethnic background, religion, language, or location—in other words, harms fall on users who might already be marginalized. More extensive use of the Database and other automated filtering tools will amplify the risk of harms to users whose messages and communications about matters of urgent public concern may be wrongly removed by platforms. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism has expressed concern about this lack of clarity, and said that Facebook’s rules for classifying organizations as terrorist are “at odds with international humanitarian law”.

Due to the opacity of the Database’s operations, it is impossible to assess the consequences of its nearly two years of operation. The European public is being asked to rely on claims by platforms or vendors about the efficacy of the Database and similar tools—or else to assume that any current problems will be solved by hypothetical future technologies or untested, post-removal appeal mechanisms. Such optimistic assumptions cannot be justified given the serious problems researchers have found with the few filtering tools available for independent review. Requiring all platforms to use black-box tools like the Database would be a gamble with European Internet users’ rights to privacy and data protection, freedom of expression and information, and non-discrimination and equality before the law. That gamble is neither necessary nor proportionate as an exercise of state power.

EU institutions’ embrace of the database and other filtering tools will also have serious consequences for Internet users all over the world, including in countries where various of the undersigned organizations work to protect human rights. For one thing, when platforms filter a video or image in response to a European authority’s request, it will likely disappear for users everywhere—even if it is part of critical news reporting or political discourse in other parts of the world. For another, encoding proactive measures to filter and remove content in an EU regulation gives authoritarian and authoritarian-leaning regimes the cover they need to justify their own vaguely worded and arbitrarily applied anti-terrorism legislation. Platforms that have already developed content filtering capabilities in order to comply with EU laws will find it difficult to resist demands to use them in other regions and under other laws, to the detriment of vulnerable Internet users around the globe. Your decisions in this area will have global consequences.

Signatories:
Access Now; Africa Freedom of Information Centre; Agustina Del Campo, in an individual capacity (Center for Studies on Freedom of Expression CELE); American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU); ApTI Romania; Article 19; Bits of Freedom; Brennan Center for Justice; Catalina Botero Marino, in an individual capacity (Former Special Rapporteur of Freedom of Expression of the Organization of American States; Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT); Centre for Internet and Society; Chinmayi Arun, in an individual capacity; Damian Loreti, in an individual capacity; Daphne Keller, in an individual capacity (Stanford CIS); Derechos Digitales · América Latina; Digital Rights Watch; Electronic Frontier Finland; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); Electronic Frontier Norway; Elena Sherstoboeva, in an individual capacity (Higher School of Economics); European Digital Rights (EDRi); Hermes Center; Hiperderecho; Homo Digitalis; IT-Pol; Joan Barata, in an individual capacity (Stanford CIS); Krisztina Rozgonyi, in an individual capacity (University of Vienna); Open Rights Group; Open Technology Institute at New America; Ossigeno; Pacific Islands News Association (PINA); People Over Politics; Prostasia Foundation; R3D: Red en Defensa de los Derechos Digitales; Sarah T. Roberts, Ph.D., in an individual capacity; Southeast Asian Press Alliance; Social Media Exchange (SMEX), Lebanon; WITNESS; and Xnet.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/jessica-corbett-common-dreams-february-5-2019-civil-liberties-groups-warn-proposed-eu-terrorist-content-rule-threat-democratic

Even years later, Twitter doesn't delete your direct messages

Zack Whittaker and Natasha Lomas — 2019-02-18T14:17:54Z

When does “delete” really mean delete? Not always, or even at all, if you’re Twitter .

The blog post by Zack Whittaker and Natasha Lomas was published in Tech Crunch on February 15, 2019. Karan Saini was quoted.

Twitter retains direct messages for years, including messages you and others have deleted, but also data sent to and from accounts that have been deactivated and suspended, according to security researcher Karan Saini.

Saini found years-old messages in a file from an archive of his data obtained through the website from accounts that were no longer on Twitter. He also reported a similar bug, found a year earlier but not disclosed until now, that allowed him to use a since-deprecated API to retrieve direct messages even after a message was deleted from both the sender and the recipient — though, the bug wasn’t able to retrieve messages from suspended accounts.

Saini told TechCrunch that he had “concerns” that the data was retained by Twitter for so long.

Direct messages once let users “unsend” messages from someone else’s inbox, simply by deleting it from their own. Twitter changed this years ago, and now only allows a user to delete messages from their account. “Others in the conversation will still be able to see direct messages or conversations that you have deleted,” Twitter says in a help page. Twitter also says in its privacy policy that anyone wanting to leave the service can have their account “deactivated and then deleted.” After a 30-day grace period, the account disappears, along with its data.

But, in our tests, we could recover direct messages from years ago — including old messages that had since been lost to suspended or deleted accounts. By downloading your account’s data, it’s possible to download all of the data Twitter stores on you.

A conversation, dated March 2016, with a suspended Twitter account was still retrievable today (Image: TechCrunch)

Saini says this is a “functional bug” rather than a security flaw, but argued that the bug allows anyone a “clear bypass” of Twitter mechanisms to prevent accessed to suspended or deactivated accounts.

But it’s also a privacy matter, and a reminder that “delete” doesn’t mean delete — especially with your direct messages. That can open up users, particularly high-risk accounts like journalist and activists, to government data demands that call for data from years earlier.

That’s despite Twitter’s claim that once an account has been deactivated, there is “a very brief period in which we may be able to access account information, including tweets,” to law enforcement.

A Twitter spokesperson said the company was “looking into this further to ensure we have considered the entire scope of the issue.”

Retaining direct messages for years may put the company in a legal grey area ground amid Europe’s new data protection laws, which allows users to demand that a company deletes their data.

Neil Brown, a telecoms, tech and internet lawyer at U.K. law firm Decoded Legal, said there’s “no formality at all” to how a user can ask for their data to be deleted. Any request from a user to delete their data that’s directly communicated to the company “is a valid exercise” of a user’s rights, he said.

Companies can be fined up to four percent of their annual turnover for violating GDPR rules.

“A delete button is perhaps a different matter, as it is not obvious that ‘delete’ means the same as ‘exercise my right of erasure’,” said Brown. Given that there’s no case law yet under the new General Data Protection Regulation regime, it will be up to the courts to decide, he said.

When asked if Twitter thinks that consent to retain direct messages is withdrawn when a message or account is deleted, Twitter’s spokesperson had “nothing further” to add.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/zack-whittaker-natasha-lomas-february-15-2019-tech-crunch-even-years-later-twitter-doesnt-delete-your-direct-messages

Data Infrastructures and Inequities: Why Does Reproductive Health Surveillance in India Need Our Urgent Attention?

Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon — 2019-12-30T16:44:32Z

In order to bring out certain conceptual and procedural problems with health monitoring in the Indian context, this article by Aayush Rathi and Ambika Tandon posits health monitoring as surveillance and not merely as a “data problem.” Casting a critical feminist lens, the historicity of surveillance practices unveils the gendered power differentials wedded into taken-for-granted “benign” monitoring processes. The unpacking of the Mother and Child Tracking System and the National Health Stack reveals the neo-liberal aspirations of the Indian state.

The article was first published by EPW Engage, Vol. 54, Issue No. 6, on 9 February 2019.

Framing Reproductive Health as a Surveillance Question

The approach of the postcolonial Indian state to healthcare has been Malthusian, with the prioritisation of family planning and birth control (Hodges 2004). Supported by the notion of socio-economic development arising out of a “modernisation” paradigm, the target-based approach to achieving reduced fertility rates has shaped India’s reproductive and child health (RCH) programme (Simon-Kumar 2006).

This is also the context in which India’s abortion law, the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act, was framed in 1971, placing the decisional privacy of women seeking abortions in the hands of registered medical practitioners. The framing of the MTP act invisibilises females seeking abortions for non-medical reasons within the legal framework. The exclusionary provisions only exacerbated existing gaps in health provisioning, as access to safe and legal abortions had already been curtailed by severe geographic inequalities in funding, infrastructure, and human resources. The state has concomitantly been unable to meet contraceptive needs of married couples or reduce maternal and infant mortality rates in large parts of the country, mediating access along the lines of class, social status, education, and age (Sanneving et al 2013).

While the official narrative around the RCH programme transitioned to focus on universal access to healthcare in the 1990s, the target-based approach continues to shape the reality on the ground. The provision of reproductive healthcare has been deeply unequal and, in some cases, in hospitals. These targets have been known to be met through the practice of forced, and often unsafe, sterilisation, in conditions of absence of adequate provisions or trained professionals, pre-sterilisation counselling, or alternative forms of contraception (Sama and PLD 2018). Further, patients have regularly been provided cash incentives, foreclosing the notion of free consent, especially given that the target population of these camps has been women from marginalised economic classes in rural India.

Placing surveillance studies within a feminist praxis allows us to frame the reproductive health landscape as more than just an ill-conceived, benign monitoring structure. The critical lens becomes useful for highlighting that taken-for-granted structures of monitoring are wedded with power differentials: genetic screening in fertility clinics, identification documents such as birth certificates, and full-body screeners are just some of the manifestations of this (Adrejevic 2015). Emerging conversations around feminist surveillance studies highlight that these data systems are neither benign nor free of gendered implications (Andrejevic 2015). In continual remaking of the social, corporeal body as a data actor in society, such practices render some bodies normative and obfuscate others, based on categorisations put in place by the surveiller.

In fact, the history of surveillance can be traced back to the colonial state where it took the form of systematic sexual and gendered violence enacted upon indigenous populations in order to render them compliant (Rifkin 2011; Morgensen 2011). Surveillance, then, manifests as a “scientific” rationalisation of complex social hieroglyphs (such as reproductive health) into formats enabling administrative interventions by the modern state. Lyon (2001) has also emphasised how the body emerged as the site of surveillance in order for the disciplining of the “irrational, sensual body”—essential to the functioning of the modern nation-state—to effectively happen.

Questioning the Information and Communications Technology for Development (ICT4D) and Big Data for Development (BD4D) Rhetoric

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and data-driven approaches to the development of a robust health information system, and by extension, welfare, have been offered as solutions to these inequities and exclusions in access to maternal and reproductive healthcare in the country.

The move towards data-driven development in the country commenced with the introduction of the Health Management Information System in Andhra Pradesh in 2008, and the Mother and Child Tracking System (MCTS) nationally in 2011. These are reproductive health information systems (HIS) that collect granular data about each pregnancy from the antenatal to the post-natal period, at the level of each sub-centre as well as primary and community health centre. The introduction of HIS comprised cross-sectoral digitisation measures that were a part of the larger national push towards e-governance; along with health, thirty other distinct areas of governance, from land records to banking to employment, were identified for this move towards the digitalised provisioning of services (MeitY 2015).

The HIS have been seen as playing a critical role in the ecosystem of health service provision globally. HIS-based interventions in reproductive health programming have been envisioned as a means of: (i) improving access to services in the context of a healthcare system ridden with inequalities; (ii) improving the quality of services provided, and (iii) producing better quality data to facilitate the objectives of India’s RCH programme, including family planning and population control. Accordingly, starting 2018, the MCTS is being replaced by the RCH portal in a phased manner. The RCH portal, in areas where the ANMOL (ANM Online) application has been introduced, captures data real-time through tablets provided to health workers (MoHFW 2015).

A proposal to mandatorily link the Aadhaar with data on pregnancies and abortions through the MCTS/RCH has been made by the union minister for Women and Child Development as a deterrent to gender-biased sex selection (Tembhekar 2016). The proposal stems from the prohibition of gender-biased sex selection provided under the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostics Techniques (PCPNDT) Act, 1994. The approach taken so far under the PCPNDT Act, 2014 has been to regulate the use of technologies involved in sex determination. However, the steady decline in the national sex ratio since the passage of the PCPNDT Act provides a clear indication that the regulation of such technology has been largely ineffective. A national policy linking Aadhaar with abortions would be aimed at discouraging gender-biased sex selection through state surveillance, in direct violation of a female’s right to decisional privacy with regards to their own body.

Linking Aadhaar would also be used as a mechanism to enable direct benefit transfer (DBT) to the beneficiaries of the national maternal benefits scheme. Linking reproductive health services to the Aadhaar ecosystem has been critiqued because it is exclusionary towards women with legitimate claims towards abortions and other reproductive services and benefits, and it heightens the risk of data breaches in a cultural fabric that already stigmatises abortions. The bodies on which this stigma is disproportionately placed, unmarried or disabled females, for instance, experience the harms of visibility through centralised surveillance mechanisms more acutely than others by being penalised for their deviance from cultural expectations. This is in accordance with the theory of "data extremes,” wherein marginalised communities are seen as living on the extremes of data capture, leading to a data regime that either refuses to recognise them as legitimate entities or subjects them to overpolicing in order to discipline deviance (Arora 2016). In both developed and developing contexts, the broader purpose of identity management has largely been to demarcate legitimate and illegitimate actors within a population, either within the framework of security or welfare.

Potential Harms of the Data Model of Reproductive Health Provisioning

Informational privacy and decisional privacy are critically shaped by data flows and security within the MCTS/RCH. No standards for data sharing and storage, or anonymisation and encryption of data have been implemented despite role-based authentication (NHSRC and Taurus Glocal 2011). The risks of this architectural design are further amplified in the context of the RCH/ANMOL where data is captured real-time. In the absence of adequate safeguards against data leaks, real-time data capture risks the publicising of reproductive health choices in an already stigmatised environment. This opens up avenues for further dilution of autonomy in making future reproductive health choices.

Several core principles of informational privacy, such as limitations regarding data collection and usage, or informed consent, also need to be reworked within this context.^[1] For instance, the centrality of the requirement of “free, informed consent” by an individual would need to be replaced by other models, especially in the context of reproductive health of rape survivors who are vulnerable and therefore unable to exercise full agency. The ability to make a free and informed choice, already dismantled in the context of contemporary data regimes, gets further precluded in such contexts. The constraints on privacy in decisions regarding the body are then replicated in the domain of reproductive data collection.

What is uniform across these digitisation initiatives is their treatment of maternal and reproductive health as solely a medical event, framed as a data scarcity problem. In doing so, they tend to amplify the understanding of reproductive health through measurable indicators that ignore social determinants of health. For instance, several studies conducted in the rural Indian context have shown that the degree of women’s autonomy influences the degree of usage of pregnancy care, and that the uptake of pregnancy care was associated with village-level indicators such as economic development, provisioning of basic infrastructure and social cohesion. These contextual factors get overridden in pervasive surveillance systems that treat reproductive healthcare as comprising only of measurable indicators and behaviours, that are dependent on individual behaviour of practitioners and women themselves, rather than structural gaps within the system.

While traditionally associated with state governance, the contemporary surveillance regime is experienced as distinct from its earlier forms due to its reliance on a nexus between surveillance by the state and private institutions and actors, with both legal frameworks and material apparatuses for data collection and sharing (Shepherd 2017). As with historical forms of surveillance, the harms of contemporary data regimes accrue disproportionately among already marginalised and dissenting communities and individuals. Data-driven surveillance has been critiqued for its excesses in multiple contexts globally, including in the domains of predictive policing, health management, and targeted advertising (Mason 2015). In the attempts to achieve these objectives, surveillance systems have been criticised for their reliance on replicating past patterns, reifying proximity to a hetero-patriarchal norm (Haggerty and Ericson 2000). Under data-driven surveillance systems, this proximity informs the preexisting boxes of identity for which algorithmic representations of the individual are formed. The boxes are defined contingent on the distinct objectives of the particular surveillance project, collating disparate pieces of data flows and resulting in the recasting of the singular offline self into various 'data doubles' (Haggerty and Ericson 2000). Refractive, rather than reflective, the data doubles have implications for the physical, embodied life of individual with an increasing number of service provisioning relying on the data doubles (Lyon 2001). Consider, for instance, apps on menstruation, fertility, and health, and wearables such as fitness trackers and pacers, that support corporate agendas around what a woman’s healthy body should look, be or behave like (Lupton 2014). Once viewed through the lens of power relations, the fetishised, apolitical notion of the data “revolution” gives way to what we may better understand as “dataveillance.”

Towards a Networked State and a Neo-liberal Citizen

Following in this tradition of ICT being treated as the solution to problems plaguing India’s public health information system, a larger, all-pervasive healthcare ecosystem is now being proposed by the Indian state (NITI Aayog 2018). Termed the National Health Stack, it seeks to create a centralised electronic repository of health records of Indian citizens with the aim of capturing every instance of healthcare service usage. Among other functions, it also envisions a platform for the provisioning of health and wellness-based services that may be dispensed by public or private actors in an attempt to achieve universal health coverage. By allowing private parties to utilise the data collected through pullable open application program interfaces (APIs), it also fits within the larger framework of the National Health Policy 2017 that envisions the private sector playing a significant role in the provision of healthcare in India. It also then fits within the state–private sector nexus that characterises dataveillance. This, in turn, follows broader trends towards market-driven solutions and private financing of health sector reform measures that have already had profound consequences on the political economy of healthcare worldwide (Joe et al 2018).

These initiatives are, in many ways, emblematic of the growing adoption of network governance reform by the Indian state (Newman 2001). This is a stark shift from its traditional posturing as the hegemonic sovereign nation state. This shift entails the delayering from large, hierarchical and unitary government systems to horizontally arranged, more flexible, relatively dispersed systems.^[2] The former govern through the power of rules and law, while the latter take the shape of self-regulating networks such as public–private contractual arrangements (Snellen 2005). ICTs have been posited as an effective tool in enabling the transition to network governance by enhancing local governance and interactive policymaking enabling the co-production of knowledge (Ferlie et al 2011). The development of these capabilities is also critical to addressing “wicked problems” such as healthcare (Rittel and Webber 1973).^[3] The application of the techno-deterministic, data-driven model to reproductive healthcare provision, then, resembles a fetishised approach to technological change. The NHSRC describes this as the collection of data without an objective, leading to a disproportional burden on data collection over use (NHSRC and Taurus Glocal 2011).

The blurring of the functions of state and private actors is reflective of the neo-liberal ethic, which produces new practices of governmentality. Within the neo-liberal framework of reproductive healthcare, the citizen is constructed as an individual actor, with agency over and responsibility for their own health and well-being (Maturo et al 2016).

“Quantified Self” of the Neo-liberal Citizen

Nowhere can the manifestation of this neo-liberal citizen can be seen as clearly as in the “quantified self” movement. The quantified self movement refers to the emergence of a whole range of apps that enable the user to track bodily functions and record data to achieve wellness and health goals, including menstruation, fertility, pregnancies, and health indicators in the mother and baby. Lupton (2015) labels this as the emergence of the “digitised reproductive citizen,” who is expected to be attentive to her fertility and sexual behaviour to achieve better reproductive health goals. The practice of collecting data around reproductive health is not new to the individual or the state, as has been demonstrated by the discussion above. What is new in this regime of datafication under the self-tracking movement is the monetisation of reproductive health data by private actors, the labour for which is performed by the user. Focusing on embodiment draws attention to different kinds of exploitation engendered by reproductive health apps. Not only is data about the body collected and sold, the unpaid labour for collection is extracted from the user. The reproductive body can then be understood as a cyborg, or a woman-machine hybrid, systematically digitising its bodily functions for profit-making within the capitalist (re)production machine (Fotoloulou 2016). Accordingly, all major reproductive health tracking apps have a business model that relies on selling information about users for direct marketing of products around reproductive health and well-being (Felizi and Varon nd).

As has been pointed out in the case of big data more broadly, reproductive health applications (apps) facilitate the visibility of the female reproductive body in the public domain. Supplying anonymised data sets to medical researchers and universities fills some of the historical gaps in research around the female body and reproductive health. Reproductive and sexual health tracking apps globally provide their users a platform to engage with biomedical information around sexual and reproductive health. Through group chats on the platform, they are also able to engage with experiential knowledge of sexual and reproductive health. This could also help form transnational networks of solidarity around the body and health (Fotopoulou 2016).

This radical potential of network-building around reproductive and sexual health is, however, tempered to a large extent by the reconfiguration of gendered stereotypes through these apps. In a study on reproductive health apps on Google Play Store, Lupton (2014) finds that products targeted towards female users are marketed through the discourse of risk and vulnerability, while those targeted towards male users are framed within that of virility. Apart from reiterating gendered stereotypes around the male and female body, such a discourse assumes that the entire labour of family planning is performed by females. This same is the case with the MCTS/RCH.

Technological interventions such as reproductive health apps as well as HIS are based on the assumption that females have perfect control over decisions regarding their own bodies and reproductive health, despite this being disproved in India. The Guttmacher Institute (2014) has found that 60% of women in India report not having control over decisions regarding their own healthcare. The failure to account for the husband or the family as stakeholder in decision-making around reproductive health has been a historical failure of the family planning programme in India, and is now being replicated in other modalities. This notion of an autonomous citizen who is able to take responsibility of their own reproductive health and well-being does not hold true in the Indian context. It can even be seen as marginalising females who have already been excluded from the reproductive health system, as they are held responsible for their own inability to access healthcare.

Concluding Remarks

The interplay that emerges between reproductive health surveillance and data infrastructures is a complex one. It requires the careful positioning of the political nature of data collection and processing as well as its hetero-patriarchal and colonial legacies, within the need for effective utilisation of data for achieving developmental goals. Assessing this discourse through a feminist lens identifies the web of power relations in data regimes. This problematises narratives of technological solutions for welfare provision.

The reproductive healthcare framework in India then offers up a useful case study to assess these concerns. The growing adoption of ICT-based surveillance tools to equalise access to healthcare needs to be understood in the socio-economic, legal, and cultural context where these tools are being implemented. Increased surveillance has historically been associated with causing the structural gendered violence that it is now being offered as a solution to. This is a function of normative standards being constructed for reproductive behaviour that necessarily leave out broader definitions of reproductive health and welfare when viewed through a feminist lens. Within the larger context of health policymaking in India, moves towards privatisation then demonstrate the peculiarity of dataveillance as it functions through an unaccountable and pervasive overlapping of state and private surveillance practises. It remains to be seen how these trends in ICT-driven health policies affect access to reproductive rights and decisional privacy for millions of females in India and other parts of the global South.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/data-infrastructures-inequities-reproductive-health-surveillance-india

Intermediary Liability Rules 2018.pdf

karan — 2019-02-07T07:32:23Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/resources/Intermediary%20Liability%20Rules%202018.pdf