Centre for Internet and Society

Government gives free publicity worth 40k to Twitter and Facebook

Akriti Bopanna — 2018-04-27T09:52:26Z

We conducted a 2 week survey of newspapers for links between government advertisement to social media giants. As citizens, we should be worried about the close nexus between the Indian government and digital behemoths such as Facebook, Google and Twitter. It has become apparent to us after a 2 week print media analysis that our Government has been providing free publicity worth Rs 40,000 to these entities. There are multiple issues with this as this article attempts at pointing out.

We analyzed 5 English language newspapers daily for 2 weeks from March 12^th to 26^th, one week of the newspapers in Lucknow and the second week in Bangalore. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Alphabet backed services such as Youtube and Google Plus were part of our survey. Of a total of 33 advertisements (14 in Lucknow+19 in Bangalore), Twitter stands out as the most prominent advertising platform used by government agencies with 30 ads but Facebook at 29 was more expensive. In order to ascertain the rates of publicity, current advertisement rates for Times of India as our purpose was to solely give a rough estimation of how much the government is spending.

Advertising of this nature is not merely an inherent problem of favoring some social media companies over others but also symptomatic of a bigger problem, the lack of our native e-governance mechanisms which cause the Government to rely and promote others. Where we do have guidelines they are not being followed. By outsourcing their e-governance platforms to Twitter such as TwitterSeva, a feature created by the Twitter India team to help citizens connect better with government services, there is less of an impetus to construct better websites of their own.

If this is so because we currently do not have the capacity to build them ourselves then it is imperative that this changes. We should either be executing government functions on digital infrastructure owned by them or on open and interoperable systems. If anything, the surveyed social media platforms can be used to enhance pre-existing facilities. However, currently the converse is true with these platforms overshadowing the presence of e-governance websites. Officials have started responding to complaints on Twitter, diluting the significance of such complaint mechanisms on their respective department’s portal. Often enough such features are not available on the relevant government website. This sets a dangerous precedent for a citizen management system as the records of such interactions are then in the hands of these companies who may not exist in the future. As a result, they can control the access to such records or worse tamper with them. Posterity and reliability of such data can be ensured only if they are stored within the Government’s reach or if they are open and public with a first copy stored on Government records which ensures transparency as well. Data portability is an important facet to this issue as well as being a right consumers should possess. It provides for support of many devices, transition to alternative technologies and lastly, makes sure that all the data like other public records will be available upon request through the Right to Information procedure. The last is vital to uphold the spirit of transparency envisioned through the RTI process since interactions of government with citizens are then under its ambit and available for disclosure for whomsoever concerned.

Secondly, such practices by the Government are enhancing the monopoly of the companies in the market effectively discouraging competition and eventually, innovation. While a certain elite strata of the population might opt for Twitter or Facebook as their mode of conveying grievance, this may not hold true for the rest of the online India population.

Picking players in a free market is in violation of technology and vendor neutrality, a practice essential in e-governance to provide a level playing field for all and competing technologies. Projecting only a few platforms as de facto mediums of communication with the government inhibits the freedom of choice of citizens to air their grievances through a vendor or technology they are comfortable with. At the same time it makes the Government a mouthpiece for such companies who are gaining free publicity and consolidating their popularity. Government apps such as the SwachBharat one which is an e-governance platform do not offer much more in terms of functionality but either reflect the website or are a less mature version of the same. This leads to the problem of fracturing with many avenues of complaining such as the website, app, Twitter etc. Consequently, the priority of the people dealing with the complaints in terms of platform of response is unsure. Will I be responded to sooner if I tweet a complaint as opposed to putting it up on the app? Having an interoperable system can solve this where the Government can have a dashboard of their various complaints and responses are then made out evenly. Twitter itself could implement this by having complaints from Facebook for example and then the Twitter Seva would be an equal platform as opposed to the current issue where only they are favored.

Recent events have illustrated how detrimental the storage of data by these giants can be in terms of privacy. Data security concerns are also a consequence of such leaks. Not only is this a long overdue call for a better data protection law but at the same time also for the Government to realize that these platforms cannot be trusted. The hiring of Cambridge Analytica to influence voters in the US elections, based on their Facebook profiles and ancillary data, effectively put the governance of the country on sale by exploiting these privacy and security issues. By basing e-governance on their backbone, India is not far from inviting trouble as well. It is unnecessary and dangerous to have a go-between for matters that pertain between an individual and state.

As this article was being written, it was confirmed by the Election Commission that they are partnering with Facebook for the Karnataka Assemby Elections to promote activities such as encourage enrollment of Voter ID and voter participation. Initiatives like these tying the government even closer to these companies are of concern and cementing the latter’s stronghold.

Note: Our survey data and results are attached to this post. All research was collected by Shradha Nigam, a Vth year student at NLSIU, Bangalore.

Survey Data and Results

This report is based on a survey of government advertisements in English language newspapers in relation to their use of social media platforms and dedicated websites (“Survey”). For the purpose of this report, the ambit of the social media platforms has been limited to the use of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Plus and Instagram. The report was prepared by Shradha Nigam, a student from National Law School of India University, Bangalore. Read the full report here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/government-giving-free-publicity-worth-40-k-to-twitter-and-facebook

Digital Native: Delete Facebook?

nishant — 2018-05-06T03:08:25Z

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

The article was published in Indian Express on April 8, 2018.

One fine day, we all woke up and were told that Facebook sold our data to Cambridge Analytica and then they made dastardly profiles of us to target us with advertisement and political propaganda, so, we made a beeline for #DeleteFacebook. The most surprising part about the expose is how much of a non-event it is. We have been warned, at least since the Edward Snowden revelations, if not earlier, that our data is the new oil, coal and gold. It is being used as a resource, it is being mined from our everyday digital transactions, and it is precious because it can result in a massive social engineering without our consent or knowledge. Ever since Facebook started expanding its domain from being a friends-poke-friends-with-livestock website, we have been warned that the ambition of Facebook was never to connect you with your friends but to be your friend.

Time and again, we have been told that the sapient Facebook algorithm remembers everything you say and do, anticipates all your future needs, and listens to the most banal litany of your life. More than your mom, your partner or your shrink, it’s the Facebook algorithm which is interested in all your quotidian uselessness. It is not the stranger who accesses your post that should worry you. The biggest perpetrator of privacy violations on Facebook is Facebook itself. There is good reason why a company that offers its prime products for free is valuated as one of the richest corporations in the world. The product of Facebook – it has always been known – is us.

Why, then, are we suddenly taken aback at the fact that Facebook sold us? And while we are sharing our thoughts (ironically on Facebook) about deleting our profiles, the question that remains is this: How much of your digital life are you willing to erase? Because, and I am sorry if this pricks your filter bubble, Facebook’s problem is not really a Facebook problem. It is almost the entire World Wide Web, where we lost the battle for data ownership and platform openness more than two decades ago. Name one privately owned free service that you use on the internet and I will show you the section in its “terms and services” where you have surrendered your data. In fact, you can’t even find government services, tied up with their private partners, where your data is safe and stored in privacy vaults where it won’t be abused.

It is time to realise that the popular ’90s meme “All your base are belong to us” is the lived reality of our digital lives. As we forego ownership for convenience, as our governments sold our sovereignty for profits, and as digital corporations became behemoths that now have the capacity to challenge and write our constitutional and fundamental rights, we are waking up to a battle that has already been fought and resolved. A large part of our physical hardware to access the internet is privately owned. This means that almost all our PCs, tablets, phones, servers are owned and open to exploitation by private companies. Every time your phone does an automatic update or your PC goes into house-cleaning mode, you have to realise that you are being stored, somewhere in the cloud in ways that you cannot imagine.

It is tiring to hear this alarm and panic around Facebook’s data trading. Not only is it legal, it is something that has been happening for a while, most of us have been aware of it, and we have resolutely ignored it because, you know, cute cats. If somebody tells you that they are against privately owned physical property and are going to start a revolution to take away all private property and make it equally shared with the public, you would laugh at them because they are arriving at the battle scene after the war is over. This digital wokeness trend to #DeleteFacebook is the digital equivalent of that moment. If you want to fight, fight the governments and nations who can still protect us. Participate in conversations around Internet governance. Take responsibility to educate yourself about the politics of how the digital world operates. But stop trying to feel virtuous because you pulled out of a social media network, pretending that that is the end of the problem.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-april-8-2018-digital-native-delete-facebook

It Took Just 355 Indians to Mine the Data of 5.6 Lakh Facebook Users. Here's How

Admin — 2018-04-07T15:33:46Z

Data privacy in India is still a nascent subject. Experts say cheap data has led to unprecedented Facebook penetration. Often, it is seen that those who open an account are not aware of the privacy concerns.

The blog post by Subhajit Sengupta was published in CNN-News 18 on April 7, 2018. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

Over 5.6 lakh Indian Facebook profiles have allegedly been compromised and their data leaked to the controversial data analytics firm Cambridge Analytica. As per the company, only 335 people in India installed the App yet they managed to penetrate over half a million profiles.

So, how does this work?

Once a user downloaded the quiz app called “thisisyourdigitallife”, Global Science Research Limited got access to the entire treasure trove of data. There are two mechanisms which are used for this.

First, the Application Program Interface (API) of Facebook called ‘Social Graph’ allows any app to harvest the entire contact list and everything else that could be seen on a users’ friend’s profile. This would take place even for private profiles, says Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of Bangalore based research organization ‘Centre for Internet and Society’.

The second way is when users have a public profile. The algorithm seeks out public profiles from the friend list and would go on multiplying from one public profile to another without any of the users even coming to know what is happening. This is like the ‘True Caller’ application, for it to get your number, you don’t need to download the software. If anyone has the app and your number, then it gets automatically logged there.

Facebook says "Cambridge Analytica’s acquisition of Facebook data through the app developed by Dr Aleksandr Kogan and his company Global Science Research Limited (GSR) happened without our authorisation and was an explicit violation of our Platform policies."

GSR continued to access this data from all the Facebook profiles throughout the entire lifespan of the app on the Facebook platform, which was roughly two years between 2013 and 2015. This means, even if a user is careful enough to not download the application but his/her profile’s privacy settings are weak, the algorithm would infiltrate the data bank.

Amit Dubey, a Cyber Security Expert goes into the details of what the app did, “The app called 'thisisyourdigitallife', which was created for research work by Aleksandr Kogan, was eventually used for psychometric profiling of users and then manipulating their political biases. The app was offered to users on the pretext to take a personality test and it agreed to have their data collected for academic use only. But the app has exploited a security vulnerability of Facebook application.”

Facebook “platform policy” allowed only collection of friends’ data to improve user experience in the app and barred it from being sold or used for advertising.

But this kind of data scrapping is not just limited to Cambridge Analytica. The Social Media Algorithm is often abused in the world of data scavenging and analytics. Even law enforcement agencies have often used similar means to locate possible miscreants.

According to Shesh Sarangdhar, Chief Executive Officer in Seclabs & Systems Pvt Ltd, similar data scrapping helped them unearth the terror module behind one of the attacks at an airbase last year. Shesh said that through Social Media Algorithm they would often narrow down on unknown terror modules. What his team did was to connect to the profile the whereabouts of multiple known nods converging. That is how the mastermind was located.

Data privacy in India is still a nascent subject. Experts say cheap data has led to unprecedented Facebook penetration.

Often, it is seen that those who open an account are not aware of the privacy concerns. But as Sunil Abraham puts it, Caveat emptor or ‘Let the Buyers Beware’ does not even apply here. It is not possible for anyone to go through the entire privacy policy.

“So it is not even right to ask if the consumer can protect his/her own interest. Thus, the state should proactively regulate the industry,” said Abraham.

Facebook has brought in a number of changes to its privacy settings. It now allows you to remove third-party apps in bulk. This welcome change has come after sustained pressure on the tech giant from users and a number of regulatory bodies across the world.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/news-18-subhajit-sengupta-how-just-355-indians-put-data-of-5-6-lakh-facebook-users-at-risk

CIS Submission to the Committee of Experts on a Data Protection Framework for India

amber — 2018-04-06T08:09:09Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/cis-submission-to-the-committee-of-experts-on-a-data-protection-framework-for-india

Annual Report 2017-2018

praskrishna — 2019-01-29T01:57:43Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/reports/annual-report-2017-2018.pdf

The Narendra Modi app: The secret weapon in BJP’s elections arsenal

Admin — 2018-03-29T16:28:28Z

Narendra Modi app, BJP's secret weapon.

The article by Jayadevan PK and Pankaj Mishra was published by Factor Daily on March 29, 2018. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Story Highlights

Why is Rahul Gandhi beating the drums about the Narendra Modi app? Because he knows that the app – with over 10 million users already – will be crucial decider of a BJP victory or failure in the general elections.
The Narendra Modi app’s mission is two fold — mobilize and integrate some 100 million BJP members and use the app to deliver targeted messaging to voters. Party president Amit Shah has a target that each district should have 100,000 downloads.
In the coming general elections, there will be more than 180 million first-time voters – people who are relatively easy to target on social media. Of the 241 million Facebook users in India, about 54 million are between the age of 18 and 23 years.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi earlier this week got panned for his criticism of the Narendra Modi app. The app, Gandhi had said on Twitter, was leaking user data and added that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was “the Big Boss who likes to spy on Indians”. Much of what the Congress leaders said was hyperbole common at the hustings.

But as it turns out, Gandhi has good reason to beat the drums wildly: the Narendra Modi app is going to be, by all accounts, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s arrowhead as India pads up for its biggest general elections next year. The app is going to be the fulcrum of the BJP’s tech outreach and social media strategy in the months ahead of the elections, which may be held earlier than the scheduled early 2019 going by the buzz in political circles in capital New Delhi.

The usage of the state apparatus to promote an app owned by Modi personally and the way it plans to use data of its users is drawing criticism from political rivals and privacy activists. Critics have pointed out that the app asks for too many permissions, is less than ideally secure, and is run by the BJP while being positioned as the official application of the prime minister of India. These questions are now taking a serious tone after the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal.

“Overall, Facebook’s fallout means even more focus and reliance on the Narendra Modi app by the BJP,” said a person familiar with BJP’s social and digital plans, adding the Facebook and WhatsApp platforms will be in the background and continue to be valuable. This person asked to remain anonymous.

By “Facebook’s fallout”, he is referring to the aftermath of the scandal that implicated political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica of misusing Facebook data of millions of users without consent. Questions are also being raised in the UK and US about the involvement of Russian actors using Facebook, Google and Twitter to influence key global events such as Britain’s exit from the European Union and the US presidential elections in 2016.

After a sting by British broadcaster Channel4 showed Cambridge Analytica used dubious means to influence elections, both the Congress party and the BJP have accused each other of using the services of the analytics company.

To be sure, it will be difficult for anyone to ignore Facebook and WhatsApp for the sheer reach they offer – Facebook has over 240 million users in India and WhatsApp has a similar number of users in India. But growing the Narendra Modi app’s user base will mean a channel that won’t need to be constantly paid for and in the BJP’s direct control with all the granular data and reach that such a platform can offer.

India has the largest number of Facebook users in the world.

“The game plan is to make Narendra Modi app the killer platform for the next elections and beyond,” said the person aware of the BJP’s plan. With estimated downloads of over 10 million already, the Narendra Modi app’s mission is two-fold — mobilize and integrate some 100 million BJP members across the party’s operations and use the app to deliver targeted messaging to existing and potential voters.

To that end, Prime Minister Modi himself and the BJP have been driving app downloads in ways that will put seasoned growth hackers to shame. For instance, Modi’s new book Exam Warriors. Readers can scan QR codes in the book and post responses to the Narendra Modi app. The target: more young users for the app who will soon vote for the first time. A student taking the 12th board exams this year is likely 18 years old, come the 2019 elections.

As has been pointed out, targeting first-time voters in a country where 41% of the population is younger than 20 years is a no-brainer. Political scientist Oliver Heath posited in 2015 that the BJP’s 2014 victory came about more thanks to first-time voters rather the votes it weaned away from rival parties. There were 136 million new voters in 2014. This time there will be more than 180 million first-timers – people who are relatively easy to target on social media. Of the 241 million Facebook users in India, about 54 million are between the age of 18 and 23 years.

The BJP also has plans to co-opt educational institutions to distribute the book, said another source. The book, released in February 2018 is being translated into various languages starting with Hindi and Marathi. The BJP state government in Maharashtra is procuring nearly 150,000 books on Modi but it hasn’t said yet it would be Exam Warriors that it would buy and distribute to state schools.

The number of times Prime Minister Narendra Modi has plugged the app in his Mann Ki Baat speeches.

The prime minister also channels users to the app in his speeches and on his social media channels. A typical plug in his monthly Mann Ki Baat speech would call out a comment received on the app or ask “fellow countrymen” to share a photo or views on an issue on the app. Since October 2014, Modi has made 41 Mann Ki Baat speeches and he has mentioned the Narendra Modi app over 50 times, an analysis of his speeches shows (See graph).

Besides launching modules that enable the prime minister to talk to his council of ministers or run surveys and bundling the app with new phones to drive users, the BJP has also from time to time driven some hard app download targets to its rank and file. In September 2016, for instance, the Gujarat party chief said it will ensure at least 7 lakh downloads of the app as a birthday gift to Modi. BJP President Amit Shah wants nearly 50 million downloads for the app and has directed state officials to drive nearly 100,000 app installations in each district. “Do not take this as an information (or suggestion). Accountability will be ensured and it is the responsibility of each district unit to ensure downloading of one lakh of Narendra Modi App,” Shah reportedly said at the party’s national executive meeting in March 2016.

The app is already in play at the Karnataka elections scheduled for April. “As of now, the app has national content. Going forward we will be pumping lot of content related to Karnataka in Kannada. It will include voice, non-voice and lot of messages. He (Modi) will also be sharing through the app for Kannadigas,” says Amresh K, BJP Information Technology Cell State Convener.

“We will also be doing a Narendra Modi campaign to drive downloads,” said Amresh, who is helping create manifestos for 224 constituencies in Karnataka. “Earlier it used to be one state-level manifesto. This time we have it for 224 constituencies. We’re also engaging with 500-1000 influencers in these constituencies and about 100 sectors to compile their inputs,” he said. The 2013 manifesto of the BJP, a 40-page document, led with the development agenda focussed on specific sectors but also promised freebies such as 25-kilogram free rice to the poor and free laptop to high school goers.

Modi’s popularity as a leader in central to the app. “More than BJP today, Modi as a brand has become extremely strong. There’s a lot of mud sticking to political leaders but in comparison, he seems to be coming through as spotless,” says brand strategist and author M G Parameswaran, who helped create some of the biggest brands such as Santoor and Wipro. To appeal to the young voter, it’s important for Modi to stick to the “development narrative and not get derailed by the Hindutva narrative,” he adds.

So how does the app really help the BJP? The answer to this question really lies in the BJP’s earlier campaigns and the party’s learnings. FactorDaily interviewed people closely associated with BJP’s 2014 campaign to find out.

The ‘Golden Triple’

India could go to polls as early as the end of this year, as is being speculated by the political chatterati, or early next year. Nearly one billion Indians eligible to vote this time around (814 million in 2014) will decide the fate of 543 seats to which representatives are elected. As Rajesh Jain, a former advisor to the BJP campaign points out on his blog, “using data and analytics to identify supporters and then getting them out to vote on election day will be instrumental in determining the eventual winner”. He estimates that nearly 670 million people in India, comprising 330 million who don’t vote and 340 million who aren’t likely to support a mainstream party (or are undecided), are up for grabs.

Importantly, the dynamics at the hustings have changed. “Unlike 2015, this isn’t an election with a wave (the Narendra Modi wave). This isn’t a Facebook or a WhatsApp election in that sense. This is going to be about micro-targeting and use of Narendra Modi app. If BJP wins 2019, the app will become even more all-pervasive and a way to be free from platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook,” said the source familiar with the BJP’s plans quoted above.

Micro-targeting is the practice of crafting messages and advertising to small user cohorts. For this to work, the advertiser, will need to understand its target audience deeply and accurately. Having data from various sources, including the Modi app, will help target the electorate better.

The golden triple is a combination of booth level information, contact details and political leaning of a voter.

The lynchpin of the data strategy of the BJP is what number crunchers call the “Golden Triple”, which has three pieces to it: the details of the booth at which someone votes, the contact phone number and the political leaning of the voter. Voter details are public information in India. Collating that accurately with contact phone numbers is difficult but doable (and likely has already been done by political parties including the BJP).

The BJP, through its missed call-based membership drive back in November 2014, had amassed nearly 100 million registered members. At the time, the BJP had collected voter ID details of members as well. In other words, the party already has over 100 million ‘golden triples’. “If you have 10 crore golden triples, your target audience is sorted,” said the source who knows of BJP’s plans.

“There are four things on which the battles are won and lost—identifying those who already are your supporters, voter registration, pursue them, and finally ensuring that they turn out on the day when it all matters the most,” says the person. The Narendra Modi app becomes a tool to mobilize party workers and getting them to execute the game plan. It also doubles up as a channel to send targeted messages based on the data it has captured already.

Having data of its supporters in a constituency can help parties craft targeted messages and zone in on the audience better using social media platforms, says Ankit Lal, the author of India Social: How social media is leading the charge and changing the countryand a social media strategist for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). For instance, Facebook allows you to build a custom audience by uploading a list of email addresses or phone numbers.

The election commission’s Form 20 gives polling booth level data on which candidate got how many votes. “Now, this combined with more specific data sets, can make it far more impactful,” says the person quoted above. For instance, if the numbers aren’t looking good in a certain region, the Narendra Modi app can be used to mobilise party workers to campaign harder in those areas.

In 2014, the BJP used a market research and analytics agency Penn Schoen Berland (PSB) to firm up the key planks on which it would fight elections. The party built its campaign around issues of corruption, security of women, and inflation based on the firm’s inputs. For sure, there will be voter surveys done by the BJP (as also other parties) this time, too, but with the Narendra Modi app and its growing install base, the party’s understanding of local, district-level issues – even booth-level inputs – get strengthened through internal surveys and other mechanisms.

But, can the sophisticated combination of data analytics, micro-targeting, and bespoke messaging swing an election? The answer depends on how close the electoral fight in different constituencies will turn out to be.

When victory margins are thin, targeted campaigns (especially on social media) can win seats. Case in point: Gujarat assembly elections late last year. As this article points out, the victory margins in 57 out of 182 seats in Gujarat was less than 5% – in other words, just a few thousand votes could swing victory either which way. “The win or loss margin is very small, generally less than 5% of the electorate for a majority of constituencies,” says Lal, the AAP strategist. “For urban areas, it is easy to influence results using social media because the margins are so close.” In Karnataka, more than 30 of the 224 seats in the legislative assembly had wins with a margin of less than 3%.

What about the national elections? Here, too, the narrow wins are make or break in nature. Ninety-two seats were won with a winning margin of less than 5% in the 2014 elections. This despite the Modi wave that saw the BJP end with 282 seats in the Lok Sabha – the first time in 30 years a party won a simple majority in the lower house of Parliament.

In other words, social media has – and will continue to have – a definite sway in Indian electoral outcomes and the Narendra Modi app has its role cut out for itself.

The privacy question

On March 23, a security researcher who goes by the pseudonym Elliot Alderson, revealed that the data collected by Narendra Modi app is being passed on to analytics company Clevertap. The app also takes 22 permissions from the user, including the ability to access the user’s contacts, gallery and microphone. Privacy advocates warn that doing so without explicitly telling the user is a breach of trust. “Be careful when you enter personal data. It is often not needed and this data is often misuse (sic) after that,” Alderson messaged FactorDaily on Twitter in reply to a question. His tweets were what had the Congress Party’s Gandhi kicking up a minor storm accusing the BJP of spying on users. To be sure, it is common practice to integrate analytics and marketing tools like Clevertap into an app (also see: CleverTap’s Commitment to User Consent and Data Privacy).

Thejesh G N, founder of Datameet, a community of data scientists and open data enthusiasts, says that it’s okay for politicians to use websites or apps to string members together or talk to their constituents. But they should follow ground rules such as stating the purpose of data collection clearly, collecting minimum amount of data, sharing information about who is collecting the data, for what purpose and guaranteeing the security of personal data, and also stating how it will share data with third parties and for what purpose. This may have sounded like ideal principles of data use but less so in the aftermath of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal which has brought into focus the flagrant violation of privacy standards by almost every platform.

“People might be thinking they are giving data to the prime minister… in fact, it’s probably going to a campaign database. It’s important to make that clear.”

In the case of Narendra Modi app, some of these basic rules aren’t followed, points out Thejesh, a privacy activist from Bengaluru. “The app description on Play Store says ‘Official App of Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi. It brings to you latest information, instant updates & helps you contribute towards various tasks. It provides a unique opportunity to receive messages and emails directly from the Prime Minister.’ But the app is not owned by Government of India and so the statement is misleading,” he says. “People might be thinking they are giving data to the prime minister… in fact, it’s probably going to a campaign database. It’s important to make that clear.”

Lal of AAP minces no words when it comes to the question of ownership of data. “That’s the biggest question. How did a private app end up being used by the prime minister’s office? Either they were conned into it or they know about it. If they did it deliberately, they knowingly stole data which is no smaller than that of Cambridge Analytica. There it was between Cambridge Analytica and Facebook, here it is between citizen and their prime minister,” he says.

“There is a distinction to be drawn between providing one’s own data and providing the data of others that you happen to have.”

In 2015, privacy and tech policy expert Pranesh Prakash helped report a security vulnerability that exposed the data of Narendra Modi app users. “In 2016 again, the same set of security vulnerabilities blew up… this time, more than 5 million people’s personal profiles including their birthdates, phone numbers was available to the public,” Prakash told India Today TV. “There is a distinction to be drawn between providing one’s own data and providing the data of others that you happen to have. For instance, the Narendra Modi app asks for permissions for ‘Contacts’, which allows it to harvest your contacts. Are they using it (as you suggest they would) for the elections? If so, are they upfront about that as one of the purposes for the data collection? And are they collecting your details or details of your contacts as well,” Prakash later told FactorDaily in reply to a question on the use of data from the Narendra Modi app.

The BJP has responded to some of the criticism. Amit Malviya, the BJP IT Cell chief pointed FactorDaily to the party’s statement that said: “Narendra Modi App is a unique App, which unlike most Apps, gives access to users in ‘guest mode’ without even any permission or data. The permissions required are all contextual and cause-specific. Contrary to Rahul (Gandhi)’s lies, fact is that data is being used for only analytics using third-party service, similar to Google Analytics. Analytics on the user data is done for offering users the most contextual content. This ensures that a user gets the best experience by showing content in his language & interests. A person who looks up agri-related info will get agri related content easily. A person from TN will get updates in Tamil and get an update about an important initiative about TN.”

Will the Narendra Modi app prove to be the BJP’s Brahmastra – the mythical destructive weapon from ancient Hindu texts? The contextual content served on the app in the coming months will give the answer. If it is hyperlocal and raises issues at the booth level, you can be sure that the Brahmastra has been deployed.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/factor-daily-jayadevan-pk-and-pankaj-mishra-march-29-2018-narendra-modi-app-bjp-2019-election

Security experts say need to secure Aadhaar ecosystem, warn about third party leaks

Admin — 2018-03-26T22:37:30Z

The public reckoning of data leaks in India’s national ID database, Aadhaar is still on hold while reports of data leakage through third-parties keep coming.

The article by Nilesh Christopher was published in Economic Times on March 26, 2018. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

While the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has maintained that its database is secure and there are no breaches of Aadhaar data from its system, security researchers warn that leaks are happening in third-party sites and it is important for the agency to ensure that its ecosystem adopts measures to keep data safe.

“Securing an entire ecosystem is more important than secure individual databases,” said security researcher Srinivas Kodali. Over the weekend, technology publication ZDnet citing an Indian security researcher said that it identified Aadhaar data leaks on a system run by a state-owned utility company Indane that allowed anyone to access sensitive information like a name, Aadhar number, bank details. The leak was plugged soon after the report appeared.

UIDAI came out with a strong statement denying the breach. “There is no truth in the story as there has been absolutely no breach of UIDAI’s Aadhaar database. Aadhaar remains safe and secure,” the government agency said.

There have been no reports of any breach in the core database so far. However, it is the third-parties that have acted as weak links.

“The simple parallel that can be drawn is, though Facebook’s core database of users information was secure, the data leak happened through third-party developers and organisation like Cambridge Analytica that have allegedly misused it,” Kodali said.

In case of Aadhar too, the allegations of breaches have not been on ‘Aadhaar database’ but rather at insecure government websites and third-parties with API access to the database. “In this aspect, the issue in Facebook and Aadhaar is similar. In both the cases there was no breach of database, but it was third parties that acted as the weakest link. In both cases, it was a legitimate means of access through API that was open for abuse,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director, Center for Internet and Society.

UIDAI could take a leaf from Indian Space Research Organisation while handling data breach reports. The state-run space agency put out a note appreciating security researches for their efforts. An email ID to report flaws is more important than summoning people regarding data breaches.

“The fear of criminal prosecution hanging over the heads of ethical hackers would not help us develop a robust and strong security architecture,” said Karan Saini, a Delhi-based security researcher who first highlighted the Aadhaar leak at Indane.

“UIDAI is working on a policy to enable security experts to report issues in a legal and safe manner,” tweeted Ajay Bhushan Pandey, chief executive of India's Unique Identification Authority (UIDAI), the government department that administers the Aadhaar database. Seven months after the tweet, Pandey’s promise of a bug-reporting mechanism has still has not fructified.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-march-26-2018-nilesh-christopher-security-experts-say-need-to-secure-aadhaar-ecosystem-warn-about-third-party-leaks

Digital native: Our lonely connected lives

nishant — 2018-03-25T03:40:33Z

The article was published in the Indian Express on March 11, 2018

It is time for us to introduce the idea of Schrodinger’s Loneliness. Because one of the biggest threats and promises of digitally-networked lives is loneliness. When you are online, you are connected and alone at the same time. Technology utopias are premised on the idea that greater connectivity will lead to greater collectivity, and time and again, they have been proven right. New forms of socially mediated communication and technologies have led to the formation of unprecedented communities and networks at personal and global scales. For voices, identities, and bodies who were always silenced, discriminated against or punished, the digital web has found a space of respite, of belonging, and of organising. We have witnessed more acts of speaking up, calling out, and resistance across the globe as old voices find new channels of communication and find solidarity in their coming together.

Technology dystopias, simultaneously, have also painted terrifying pictures of human loneliness amplified by the digital isolation that often gets celebrated as personalisation. Stories emerge of people being bullied, silenced, and excluded from the digital webs, often ending in fatal consequences as the final promise of the web as an emancipatory space fails. The Black Mirror-like predictions show that under the aegis of anonymous action and alienated interaction, some of the darkest and most depraved human actions and fantasies emerge. We have now seen that those who cannot bear the burden of the digital lightness of being often find themselves burdened under the heavy cloaks of loneliness. And this loneliness often gets exacerbated because so many of our digital interactions which give the impression of connection, are actually transactions supported and fueled by shallow, illusionary intimacy.

Even as the UK last month announced the appointment of Minister of Loneliness, which sounds more like the title of the next Arundhati Roy novel, it is worth examining why we are so alone in the age of hyperconnectivity. In his provocative science fiction series called the Three Body Problem, Chinese author Cixin Liu had proposed a sociology for the cosmic worlds. Liu suggested that the universe is such a dark space of competing resources that loneliness — the hiding from others, and not letting them know that you exist — is a primary survival instinct. To connect is to bear the risk of attack, infection, and annihilation.

Liu’s science fiction proposition might only bear corroboration at the moment of extra terrestrial interaction in some unforeseen future, but it does open up an interesting proposition: When we choose to be alone and celebrate loneliness as our default. It is an indication not just of a personal choice or problem but a symptom of the fact that increasingly we are building hostile and dark societies where the best survival option is to disconnect. Perhaps, the digital solitude that we seek and the networked loneliness that we seem to be sliding into, is not just about the temptations and seductions of living with algorithms and interfacing with virtual reality. Maybe, it is also a sign that the digital worlds that we are building are a response to the increasingly difficult universes that we live in.

Despite the emergence of the global web and the promises of equity, equality, fairness, and justice that have long been mounted on technologisation, we do witness a world where the predators and hunters far outnumber the hunted. While digital networks have brought out a fascinating possibility of organised solidarity, they have also created alarming expressions of anger, hatred and xenophobia around the world. In the supreme moment of fake truth politics enabled by the filter bubbles of manipulative algorithms owned by profiteering companies and governments, the world seems to be balanced on the sine curve of a silicon chip. Across the world, we see the rise of fascist governments and expressions of hatred, where people are lynched to death by power hungry vigilantes, and communities are dislocated by resource-hunting corporations. Global populations are experiencing poverty, hunger, and an erosion of foundational human rights even as they get unfettered access to digital technologies. As IT companies surpass the economic and political strengths of nation states, we see new violations and new strategies of manipulation without accountability and safeguards.

The rise of the digital has not just been the moment of resistance, it has been a coup. The world as we know it has not only changed, but it has been replaced, and in this new version of the rebooted world, the user is perhaps the most disenfranchised and precarious. It is not really a wonder that being disconnected might be the last chance for survival.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-march-11-2018-digital-native-our-lonely-connected-lives

On World Water Day - Open Data for Water Resources

sumandro — 2019-01-28T14:41:51Z

Lack of open data for researchers and activists is a key barrier against ensuring access to water and planning for sustainable management of water resources. In a collaboration between DataMeet and CIS, supported by Arghyam, we are exploring the early steps for making open data and tools to plan for water resources accessible to all. To celebrate the World Water Day 2018, we are sharing what we have been working on in the past few months - a paper on open data for water studies in India, and a web app to make open water data easily explorable and usable. Craig Dsouza led this collaboration, and authored this post.

Project Blog: Open Water Data for Integrated Water Science (External)

Open Water Data Paper - Datasets for Water Studies in India Blog - Summary: Read (External)

Open Water Data Paper - Datasets for Water Studies in India Blog - Full Paper: Read (PDF)

Open Water Data Web App: View (External)

Open Water Data Web App - Tech Stack: Read (External)

Open Water Data Web App - Precipitation Data: Read (External)

The 22nd of March is celebrated internationally as World Water Day. Water is so tightly intertwined in every aspect of our lives that one can only scratch the surface in understanding this resource. Besides directly giving us life, it is a key non-renewable shared resource that dictates whether and how societies can grow and prosper. It has shaped the way civilization arose - on riverbanks and coastal lands. Adequate water of good quality can make or break a child’s early growth. Water available at the right time in the monsoon could shape a family’s fortunes for an entire year.

Unfortunately given the development trajectory of the last century, we have struggled to strike a balance and use water in a sustainable manner. Far too many face the ill effects of this misuse. The challenge with water lies in its nature as a common pool resource, which means that it belongs to everyone. Water is for everyone to benefit from and conversely it is no individual’s responsibility to manage and to ensure its sustainability. While some laws and policies exist to ensure sustainable use of water its fluid (pun intended) and ephemeral nature make those laws very hard to enforce. No one knows for sure how much water lies under the ground and above the surface, we only have estimates. Moreover even these estimates lie in the hands of a few. The Government of India is by far the largest entity that collects data on water across the country. Management of this resource however requires that these data points and the capacity to monitor should be decentralized. The 73rd amendment recognises this by placing the authority to plan and implement local works such as watershed management and drinking water provision under the purview of Panchayats.

To address this shortcoming Datameet and CIS in collaboration have taken first steps with a project to ensure that data and tools to plan for water resources are accessible to all. The strategy within this project has been to seek alternative data sources for water, other than government data much of which still isn’t open data. Two alternatives that have emerged are remote sensing open data and crowdsourced community data. A paper put together by the team highlights the numerous sources available for datasets such as rainfall, soil moisture, groundwater levels, reservoir storages, river flows, and water demand including domestic and agricultural water. Besides the paper the team has also put together a first iteration of a web app which seeks to provide these datasets in an easy to use intuitive and interactive format to users in the area of water planning and management. The first dataset available here is CHIRPS: a high resolution daily rainfall dataset for the whole of India.

The plans for this project in the future include making available more datasets (crop maps and Evapotranspiration) and features to access them. In addition to this the goal is also to improve our understanding of the usability of remote sensing water data with efforts to calibrate it with ground observations. A key element of these plans is to develop these resources in collaboration with end users of the data so that the tools are developed with their concerns in mind. We welcome ideas, queries, feedback, and partnerships - do contact us at pune@datameet.org.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/on-world-water-day-open-data-for-water-resources

February 2018 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2018-03-17T11:11:33Z

February 2018 Newsletter

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
Open Access India recently released a statement to promote openness in science and research communities. CIS contributed to the text and introduced it to the participants of OpenCon 2018, Delhi. Marathi Language day is celebrated all over world on 27th February. Various events and activities were conducted by CIS-A2K in collaboration with community, institutions and government departments. Amber Sinha wrote a short series of three op-eds for Asia Times. The first article examines the debate around consent and the arguments made to discard it. The second article examines the substance of the argument of 'innovation' as a legitimate competing interest with respect to privacy. The third article looks at the two competing arms of regulation - enforcement and compliance, and how a balance of two is needed in India. Amber Sinha developed a visual guide to the story of privacy law in India and the recent judgment of Puttaswamy v. Union of India. Pooja Saxena designed and conceptualized the visual guide. CIS made a submission on the ‘White Paper of the Committee of Experts on a Data Protection Framework for India’ (“White Paper”) released by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. CIS has collaborated with LabEx ICCA (Université Paris 13), UNESCO New Delhi, Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH), and Centre d'études de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud (CEIAS), to organise a Research Symposium on Digital Transitions in Cultural and Creative Industries in India. The symposium gathers researchers and practitioners engaging with the changing landscape of cultural and creative industries in India in the context of the rapid expansion of digital technologies and social media.

Highlights

Open Access India recently released a statement to promote openness in science and research communities. CIS contributed to the text and introduced it to the participants of OpenCon 2018, Delhi.
Marathi Language day is celebrated all over world on 27th February. Various events and activities were conducted by CIS-A2K in collaboration with community, institutions and government departments.
Amber Sinha wrote a short series of three op-eds for Asia Times. The first article examines the debate around consent and the arguments made to discard it. The second article examines the substance of the argument of 'innovation' as a legitimate competing interest with respect to privacy. The third article looks at the two competing arms of regulation - enforcement and compliance, and how a balance of two is needed in India.
Amber Sinha developed a visual guide to the story of privacy law in India and the recent judgment of Puttaswamy v. Union of India. Pooja Saxena designed and conceptualized the visual guide.
CIS made a submission on the ‘White Paper of the Committee of Experts on a Data Protection Framework for India’ (“White Paper”) released by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
CIS has collaborated with LabEx ICCA (Université Paris 13), UNESCO New Delhi, Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH), and Centre d'études de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud (CEIAS), to organise a Research Symposium on Digital Transitions in Cultural and Creative Industries in India. The symposium gathers researchers and practitioners engaging with the changing landscape of cultural and creative industries in India in the context of the rapid expansion of digital technologies and social media.

CIS in the News:

Aadhaar: 'Safety is regularly evolving' (Kaplan Herald; February 5, 2018).
To protect data, don’t opt for plastic or laminated Aadhaar card: UIDAI (Komal Gupta; Livemint; February 7, 2018).
From 1 March, only registered devices to be used to authenticate Aadhaar (Komal Gupta; Livemint; February 8, 2018).
Critics of India's ID card project say they have been harassed, put under surveillance (Rahul Bhatia; editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan; Reuters; February 13, 2018).
The mystery of the website which published the ‘scoop’ on BJP’s Ram Madhav (Kaveesha Kohli and Talha Ashraf; The Print; February 13, 2018).
CCI leaves Google searching for answers (Nirmal John; Economic Times; February 13, 2018).

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Access to Knowledge
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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.

►Wikipedia

Events Reports

Mini Train the Trainer 2018 (Subodh Kulkarni; February 26, 2018).
Marathi Language Day events by CIS-A2K in February 2018 (Subodh Kulkarni; February 27, 2018).

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Internet Governance
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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.

►Privacy

Submission

Submission to the Committee of Experts on a Data Protection Framework for India (Amber Sinha; February 5, 2018).

Blog Entry

AI and Manufacturing and Services in India: Looking Forward (Shweta Mohandas and Pranav M. Bidare; February 13, 2018).
Unpacking Data Protection Law: A Visual Representation (Amber Sinha; February 15, 2018).
The Fundamental Right to Privacy - A Visual Guide (Amber Sinha; February 16, 2018).

Event Organized

Roundtable on AI and Finance in India (TERI, Bangalore; February 7, 2018).

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Telecom
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CIS is involved in promoting access and accessibility to telecommunications services and resources, and has provided inputs to ongoing policy discussions and consultation papers published by TRAI. It has prepared reports on unlicensed spectrum and accessibility of mobile phones for persons with disabilities and also works with the USOF to include funding projects for persons with disabilities in its mandate:

Article

Matching Realities and Aspirations (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; January 31, 2018 and Organizing India Blogspot; February 1, 2018).

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Researchers at Work
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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:

Symposium

Research Symposium on Digital Transitions in Cultural and Creative Industries in India (Co-organized by LabEx ICCA (Université Paris 13), UNESCO New Delhi, Centre for Social Sciences and Humanities (CSH), Centre d'études de l'Inde et de l'Asie du Sud, and CIS; February 27 - 28, 2018; New Delhi). Anubha Sinha was a panellist for the session on "Copyright, Creative Content, and Rights of Performers", alongwith Nandita Saikia and Manojna Yeluri.

Article

Digital Native: AI Manifesto (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; February 25, 2018).

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About CIS
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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-2018-newsletter

Draft Roundtable Report on AI and Banking

Shweta Mohandas — 2018-03-11T14:56:31Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/draft-roundtable-report-on-ai-and-banking

AI Manufacturing and Services Report

Admin — 2018-03-11T14:43:00Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/AIManufacturingandServices_Report_02.pdf

RightsCon 2018

Admin — 2018-02-28T15:15:06Z

Rohini Lakshané, Anubha Sinha, Vidushi Marda, and Amba Kak will be participating in the seventh event in the RightsCon Summit Series to be held in Toronto from May 16 - 18, 2018 as speakers.

Rohini's proposal “Cheap and chipper: IP in India's affordable smartphones” has been accepted!

As the world’s leading conference on human rights in the digital age, RightsCon brings together business leaders, policy makers, general counsels, government representatives, technologists, and human rights defenders from around the world to tackle pressing issues at the intersection of human rights and digital technology. This is where our community comes together to break down silos, forge partnerships, and drive large-scale, real-world change toward a more free, open, and connected world.

For more info click here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/news/rightscon-2018

Marathi Language Day events by CIS-A2K in February 2018

subodh — 2018-03-17T08:58:44Z

Marathi Language day is celebrated all over world on 27th February. Dnyanpeeth award winning writer V.V.Shirwadkar alias Kusumagraj was born on this date. Various events and activities were conducted in collaboration with community, institutions and government departments.

Online Workshops

These were conducted at Jeevan Jyoti Women empowerment centre,Velhe ; Garware College of Commerce, Pune and Dayanand college in Solapur. Proof reading of marathi book on Wikisource was completed by the students of Garware college on this day.

Media

Guest editorial in leading newspaper Sakal was published on 10th Feb. The gist is - Everyone speaks, discusses about status of marathi on the occasion of language day on 27th feb and Yearly Litfest. If we want to make marathi, a global language for knowledge sharing and connecting to world lang' communities, it is necessary to adopt unicode and open source softwares in writing, publishing,printing etc. The collaborative works also need unicode as it is a universal bridge. The Wikipedias in 288 lang's is a great success story because it is based on Unicode & open source. The editorial also gives future action plan to achieve this, viz. upgradation of academic courses related to language business, writers/publishers workshops, Indic lang computing centre, digitisation/OCR and content donation in Wikisource, Wiktionary etc., Copyright free/relicense movement among writers or copyright holders, Appeal to social and educational magazines to upload their old issues on Wikisource as reference material.

Radio Interview on Tomato FM 94.3 Kolhapur on 27th Feb. The promotion was made through Facebook post and ads on Radio. The interview received good response from 2 districts.

Event in Sangli

A special event was arranged by 'Janswasthya organisation on 28th Feb. Nearly 80 prominent personalities from Sangli district gathered together to discuss about growth of marathi language. Alongwith Subodh Kulkarni, writer Ramdas Phutane also participated.

Media Coverage

News in Pudhari
News in Lokmat
News in Samana

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/marathi-language-day-events-by-cis-a2k-in-february-2018

Delhi Declaration on Open Access

Admin — 2018-02-26T14:53:07Z

Open Access India recently released a statement to promote openness in science and research communities. CIS contributed to the text and introduced it to the participants of OpenCon 2018, Delhi.

Published by Open Access India on February 14, 2018. Read the original post here.

This declaration was drafted by a group comprising of researchers and professionals working for opening up access to research outputs for public good in India. The declaration is aimed at scientific communities, scholarly societies, publishers, funders, universities and research institutions to promote openness in science and research communications.

Preamble

The South Asian region, home to 24% of the world’s population faces major challenges such as hunger, poverty and inequality. These challenges become the collective responsibility of scholars and experts in research universities across the country. Consequently, it becomes imperative that research institutes share scientific research outputs and accelerate scientific research. The Open Access movement which aims for making all ‘publicly funded research outcomes publicly available for the public good’ is gaining momentum.

“Open means anyone can freely access, use, modify, and share for any purpose(subject, at most, to requirements that preserve provenance and openness)” –Open Definition.

As per the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), ‘Open Access’ (to scholarly literature) is “free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself”.

Since the launch of the BOAI on 14th Feb. 2002, efforts are being made by various scholarly societies, academic communities and governments to make scholarly content Open. However, due to various reasons, the full potential of Open Access is not realised by the producers (scholars), publishers and readers (scholars and society at large) of this knowledge and the world is still disconnected in terms of sharing the scholarly content openly.

As per the Scimago Journal & Country Rank (SJR), India ranks 9th in the year 2016 producing about 13 lakhs articles. However, 82% of them are not Open Access and the Institutional Repositories in India are sparsely populated in spite of having Open Access mandates in place. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) lists only 200 out of the 20,000+ journals being published from India.

The historical BOAI is now 16 years old, but still there is a need for all of us to be educated and empowered to realize the power of Open Access to scholarly content and harness it for public good in India. With burgeoning commercial scholarly publications and increasing diversity in terms of availability of & accessibility to the information, we need to create a necessary framework for making Open Access the default by 2025 in India.

To ensure the wide availability and encourage the use of of research data and information for the purpose of addressing multifaceted challenges, Open Access to publicly funded research and scholarly outputs are to be made available under Open Licenses (e.g. Creative Commons) while duly acknowledging the intellectual property (work/rights of the creators/producers/authors).

Declaration

We, the contributors and signatories of this declaration, members of the Open Access India, Open Access communities of practice in India and the attendees of the OpenCon 2018 New Delhi held on 3rd Feb., 2018 at Acharya Narendra Dev College, Kalkaji, New Delhi (University of Delhi) agree to issue this declaration:

We advocate for the practice of Open Science (sharing research methods and results openly which will avoid “reinventing the wheel”) and adoption of open technologies for the development of models for sharing science and scholarship (Open Scholarship) to accelerate the progress of research and to address the real societal challenges
We will strive to publish our interim research outputs as preprints or postprints (e.g. Institutional Repositories) and encourage our peers and supervisors to do the same to make our research open and actionable in a timely manner.
We will practice and encourage researchers and scientists to implement openness in peer-reviewing and other editorial services, influence the scholarly societies to flip their journals into Open Access and will contribute for the development of whitelist of Open Access journals in India adhering to the “Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing”.
We will garner support of the relevant stakeholders (scholars, journal editorial teams, university libraries, research funders, authorities’ in-charge of dissemination of scholarship in higher education) for spearheading the Open Access movement.
We will take forward the concept of Open Access to further bring all the publicly funded research outputs (not limited to journal literature alone) to be freely available under open licenses to the public to use, reuse and share in any media in open formats.
We will impress upon policy makers to adopt an open evaluation system for research and an institutional reward system for practicing openness in science ,scientific communications and academic research across disciplines including Humanities and Social Sciences
We will support and work for an alternate reward system in recognition and promotion not in terms of the ‘Impact Factor’ of the journals, but the ‘Impact’ of the articles/scholarship in science and the society and impress upon all the scientists/scholars, research funders, research institutes, universities, academies and scholarly societies to sign the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).
We strongly agree with the Joint COAR-UNESCO Statement on Open Access , Jussieu Call and Dakar Declaration. And will also follow the international initiative Open Access 2020, to develop roadmaps to support sustainable Open Access scholarly communication models which are free of charge for the authors and free of charge availability to the readers.
While learning from South South cooperation on Open Access, will work for developing a framework for Open Access in India and South Asia: National Policies for Open Access and country-specific action plans will be formulated aimed at making Open Access as the default in India and South Asia, by 2025.
For creating more awareness on Open Access, infrastructure, capacity building, funding and policy mechanisms, as well as incentivizing for the Open Access, we come forward to share success stories, studies and discussions during the Open Access Week.

Adopted on 14th February 2018

Signatories (along with their affiliation):

Anasua Mukherjee, BRICSLICS
Anubha Sinha, CIS India
Anup Kumar Das, Open Access India; CSSP, JNU
Arul George Scaria, NLU Delhi
Barnali Roy Choudhury, Open Access India
Bhakti R Gole, Open Access India
Girija Goyal, ReFigure.org
Javed Azmi, Jamia Hamdard
Kavya Manohar, Open Access India
Neha Sharma
Nirmala Menon IIT Indore
Sailesh Patnaik, Access to Knowledge, CIS
Savithri Singh, Creative Commons India
Sridhar Gutam, Open Access India
Subhashish Panigrahi, Internet Society, O Foundation
Vijay Bhasker Lode, Open Access India
Virendra Kamalvanshi, Banaras Hindu University
Tanveer Hasan A K, Access to Knowledge, Bangalore
Waseem A Malla

Ahsan Ullah, Bangladesh
Anila Sulochana, Central University of Tamil Nadu
Anoh Kouao Antoine, Ecole Supérieure Africaine des TIC, Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast)
Antonio Solís Lima,México
Atarino Helieisar, FSM Supreme Court Law Library, Federated States of Micronesia
Bidyarthi Dutta, Vidyasagar University
Binoy Mathew, INELI
Boye Komla Dogbe, Ministère De La Communication, De La Culture, Togo
Srikanth Reddy, CBIT
Cajetan Onyeneke, Imo State University, Nigeria
Chantal Moukoko Kamole, Universitty of Douala, Cameroun
D Puthira Prathap, Extension Education Society
Daniel Bossikponnon, Ministère du plan et du Développement, Bénin
Dare Adeleke, the Federal Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria
Dilip Man Sthapit, TU Central Library/LIMISEC, Nepal
Emmy Medard Muhumuza, Busitema University Library, Uganda
Fabian Yelsang, Institute for Interdisciplinary Research and Consultancy Services, Ghana
Fayaz Loan, University of Kashmir
GJP Dixit, Central Library, Central University of Karnataka
Gurpreet Singh Sohal, GGDSD College
Harinder Pal Singh Kalra, Punjabi University
Hue Bui, Thainguyen University of Sciences, Vietnam
Jacinto Dávila, Universidad de Los Andes, Venezuela
Jaishankar K, International Journal of Cyber Criminology
Jancy Gupta, National Dairy Research Institute
JK Vijayakumar
Jonathan Tennant, Open Science MOOC, Germany
Julián Vaquerizo-Madrid, Unidad de Neurología Clínica Evolutiva, Spain
Kamal Hossain, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB), Bangladesh
Kasongo Ilunga Felix, Democratic Republic of Congo
Kavita Chaddha
Kojo Ahiakpa, Research Desk Consulting Ltd., Ghana
Krishna Chaitanya, Velaga, the Wikipedia Library
Kumaresan Chidambaranathan, New Zealand
Kunwar Singh, Banaras Hindu University
Luis Saravia, PERU
Mahendra Sahu, Gandhi Institution of Engineering & Technology,Gunupur
Maidhili S., Meenakshi College for Women
Manika Lamba, University of Delhi
Md. Nasir Uddin, BRAC University, Bangladesh
Md. Nazim Uddin, International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh
Md. Nurul Islam, International Islamic University Chittagong, Bangladesh
Md. Shahajada Masud Anowarul Haque, BRAC University, Bangladesh
Mir Sakhawat Hossain, Kabi Nazrul Government College, Bangladesh
Munusamy Natarajan, CSIR-NISCAIR
Murtoza Kh Ali, Bangladesh
Subash Pillai, ICAR-Indian Institute of Farming Systems Research
Nasar Ahmed Shah, Aligarh Muslim University
Nimesh Oza, Sardar Patel University
Niraj Chaudhary, United States
Poonam Bharti
Prerna Singh, Central University of Jammu
Rabia Bashir, Law and Parliamentary Affairs, Pakistan
Rajendran Murugan, Department of Education, University of Delhi
Rama Kant Shukla, Delhi Technological University
Raman Nair R, Centre for Informatics Research and Development
Rebat Kumar Dhakal, KUSOED Integrity Alliance, Nepal
Revocatus Kuluchumila, AMUCTA, Tanzania
M. Humayun Kabir, Tutul, National Health Library & Documentation Centre, Bangladesh
Sabuj Kumar, Chaudhuri, University of Calcutta
Sandipan Banerjee
Satwinder Bangar
Shahana Jahan, Bangladesh
Shamnad Basheer, SpicyIP
Shivendra Singh
Shreyashi Ray, NLU, Delhi
Sivakrishna Sivakoti
Soumen Kayal, Maharaja Manindra chandra College
Srinivasarao Muppidi, Sanketika Vidya Parishad Engineering College
Stephanie Gross, MSLIS from Pratt Institute, USA
Sujata Tetali, MACS-Agharkar Research Institute
Surjodeb Lulu Hono Basu
Susmita Das, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council, Bangladesh
Susmita Chakraborty, University of Calcutta
Thilagavathi, Thillai Natarajan, Avinashilingam Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women
Umesh Kumar
Umme Habiba, Noakhali Science and Technology University, Bangladesh
Vinita, Jain, M D College of Arts, Science and Commerce
Virginia Inés Simón, Red Iberoamericana de Expertos sobre la Convención de los Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad, Argentina
Vrushali Dandawate, AISSMS College of Engineering/DOAJ
Waqar Khan, Dhaka Shishu Hospital, Bangladesh
Wilbert Zvakafa, Chinhoyi University of Technology, Zimbabwe
Yasser Ahmed, South Valley University, Egypt
Yohann Thomas, Wikimedia India
Zakir Hossain, International Association of School Librarianship, International Schools Region, Switzerland
Dahmane Madjid, CERIST, Algeria
Nagarjuna G, Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR
Sulyman Sodeeq Abdulakeem, Federal Polytechnic Offa, Nigeria
Leena Shah, DOAJ
Hamady Issaga Sy, Sénégal
Sanket Oswal, Wikimedia India
Chitralekha, University of Delhi
Chris Zielinski, University of Winchester, United Kingdom
Mourya Biswas, Prateek Media

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/delhi-declaration-on-open-access