Centre for Internet and Society

Sunil Abraham - Key Listener Speech at Wikimedia Summit 2019

sunil — 2019-05-04T03:34:15Z

The Wikimedia Summit 2019 – formerly known as "Wikimedia Conference" or "Chapters Meeting" – took place on 29–31 March 2019 in Berlin. Sunil Abraham made a speech at the summit organized in Berlin.

Sunil answers a series of questions at the closing session of the Wikimedia Summit 2019:

What stands out?

Money. Creative Commons revenues are pegged at 2.4 million dollars. Mozilla Foundation gets 24 million dollars. Wikimedia Foundation gets 91 million dollars. So the job of pulling off the "Big Open" or the "creation of the meta movement" or "the movement of movements" is primarily the responsibility of the Wikimedia community given the scale of resources it is able to mobilize. For example, the Open Access movement has lost funding as its key donor Open Society Foundation after supporting the movement for 17 years is unable to support any further. The Wikipedia movement can easily save the global access movement by just allocating 1 million dollar for it.

What concerns me?

Homogenization. Homogenization of time frames, homogenization of process. Should we, for example, stagger the time period for online community consultation on the draft recommendations, so that there is less 'consultation fatigue' By homogenizing the processes at the Summit, it would be risking infantilizing the community. Would this meeting have been more exciting and useful, if Working Groups had the freedom to fork the process, and do what works for them.

What have I learned from my own journey and work?

Working with lawyers for the last 10 years, has led me to appreciate tests over principles. For example, in the open standards movement there is a constant question: is this particular standard an open standard? There, free software acts as the canary in the coal mine: If we cannot implement a standard using free software, then it is not an open standard. Working with lawyers for the last 10 years, has led me to appreciate tests over principles. For example, in the open standards movement there is a constant question: is this particular standard an open standard?There, free software acts as the canary in the coal mine: If we cannot implement a standard using free software, then it is not an open standard.

What have you learned that could be useful for the strategy process?

From the process architect I have learned that we shouldn't focus on solving /this/ particular instance of the problem, we should focus on working on developing processes that solve these problems in the future. So, the emphasis is on process fixes. This is really the bleeding edge of regulatory theory these days. Since we are in Germany, I must mention the name of the German academic Gunther Teubner who developed this concept of reflexive regulation 26 years ago in his article 'Substantive and Reflexive Elements in Modern Law.

What would you suggest to improve the strategy process?

The core of responsive regulation is community consultation processes. However, closing the loop on the consultation process is critical, otherwise participants feel that they have wasted time providing feedback. For example, the Indian telecom regulator first issues a consultation paper. Then solicits the first round of feedback, then solicits a second round of counter comments then they hold round tables, and, finally, they issue the recommendation or the regulation. But when they do that, they make sure they close the loop.They provide reasoned explanations for why suggestions were rejected. This might have to happen at both stages for this strategy development process. The working groups will have to say why they rejected certain pieces of feedback, and also the board will have to explain why they rejected certain recommendations from the working groups.

What would be your wish for this movement?

As we enter adulthood as a movement, it is important that we do not lose our youthful idealism. Idealism at two levels: ambition and vocabulary. Global civil society is broadly divided into two groups. Those who work on tractable problems, like getting rid of polio. And those who work on intractable problems, like saving and developing democracy. When monitoring and evaluation becomes a primary management lens for our movement, it shouldn't make us more and more risk-averse. Let us not focus on the easy problems let us always focus, as a movement, on the hard problems. When it comes to vocabulary, I am not totally sure that phrases like 'product experience', 'target markets', and 'Knowledge as a Service' is the vocabulary of the movement. Maybe, we need to think of two types of vocabulary, External facing vocabulary and internal facing vocabulary.

Watch the Video

Video, via Wikimedia Commons, source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Summit_2019_-_Key_listener_Sunil_Abraham.webm.
Author, Anna Rees (WMDE): Uploader: Cornelius Kibelka (WMDE), This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/sunil-abraham-key-listener-speech-at-wikimedia-summit-2019

Summary Report Internet Governance Forum 2015

jyoti — 2015-11-30T10:47:13Z

Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), India participated in the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) held at Poeta Ronaldo Cunha Lima Conference Center, Joao Pessoa in Brazil from 10 November 2015 to 13 November 2015. The theme of IGF 2015 was ‘Evolution of Internet Governance: Empowering Sustainable Development’. Sunil Abraham, Pranesh Prakash & Jyoti Panday from CIS actively engaged and made substantive contributions to several key issues affecting internet governance at the IGF 2015. The issue-wise detail of their engagement is set out below.

INTERNET GOVERNANCE

I. The Multi-stakeholder Advisory Group to the IGF organised a discussion on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Internet Economy at the Main Meeting Hall from 9:00 am to 12:30 pm on 11 November, 2015. The discussions at this session focused on the importance of Internet Economy enabling policies and eco-system for the fulfilment of different SDGs. Several concerns relating to internet entrepreneurship, effective ICT capacity building, protection of intellectual property within and across borders were availability of local applications and content were addressed. The panel also discussed the need to identify SDGs where internet based technologies could make the most effective contribution. Sunil Abraham contributed to the panel discussions by addressing the issue of development and promotion of local content and applications. List of speakers included:

Lenni Montiel, Assistant-Secretary-General for Development, United Nations
Helani Galpaya, CEO LIRNEasia
Sergio Quiroga da Cunha, Head of Latin America, Ericsson
Raúl L. Katz, Adjunct Professor, Division of Finance and Economics, Columbia Institute of Tele-information
Jimson Olufuye, Chairman, Africa ICT Alliance (AfICTA)
Lydia Brito, Director of the Office in Montevideo, UNESCO
H.E. Rudiantara, Minister of Communication & Information Technology, Indonesia
Daniel Sepulveda, Deputy Assistant Secretary, U.S. Coordinator for International and Communications Policy at the U.S. Department of State
Deputy Minister Department of Telecommunications and Postal Services for the republic of South Africa
Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society, India
H.E. Junaid Ahmed Palak, Information and Communication Technology Minister of Bangladesh
Jari Arkko, Chairman, IETF
Silvia Rabello, President, Rio Film Trade Association
Gary Fowlie, Head of Member State Relations & Intergovernmental Organizations, ITU

Detailed description of the workshop is available here http ://www .intgovforum .org /cms /igf 2015-main -sessions

Transcript of the workshop is available here http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/187-igf-2015/transcripts-igf-2015/2327-2015-11-11-internet-economy-and-sustainable-development-main-meeting-room

Video link Internet economy and Sustainable Development here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6obkLehVE8

II. Public Knowledge organised a workshop on The Benefits and Challenges of the Free Flow of Data at Workshop Room 5 from 11:00 am to 12:00 pm on 12 November, 2015. The discussions in the workshop focused on the benefits and challenges of the free flow of data and also the concerns relating to data flow restrictions including ways to address them. Sunil Abraham contributed to the panel discussions by addressing the issue of jurisdiction of data on the internet. The panel for the workshop included the following.

Vint Cerf, Google
Lawrence Strickling, U.S. Department of Commerce, NTIA
Richard Leaning, European Cyber Crime Centre (EC3), Europol
Marietje Schaake, European Parliament
Nasser Kettani, Microsoft
Sunil Abraham, CIS India

Detailed description of the workshop is available here http ://www .intgovforum .org /cms /workshops /list -of -published -workshop -proposals

Transcript of the workshop is available here http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/187-igf-2015/transcripts-igf-2015/2467-2015-11-12-ws65-the-benefits-and-challenges-of-the-free-flow-of-data-workshop-room-5

Video link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtjnHkOn7EQ

III. Article 19 and Privacy International organised a workshop on Encryption and Anonymity: Rights and Risks at Workshop Room 1 from 11:00 am to 12:30 pm on 12 November, 2015. The workshop fostered a discussion about the latest challenges to protection of anonymity and encryption and ways in which law enforcement demands could be met while ensuring that individuals still enjoyed strong encryption and unfettered access to anonymity tools. Pranesh Prakash contributed to the panel discussions by addressing concerns about existing south Asian regulatory framework on encryption and anonymity and emphasizing the need for pervasive encryption. The panel for this workshop included the following.

David Kaye, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression
Juan Diego Castañeda, Fundación Karisma, Colombia
Edison Lanza, Organisation of American States Special Rapporteur
Pranesh Prakash, CIS India
Ted Hardie, Google
Elvana Thaci, Council of Europe
Professor Chris Marsden, Oxford Internet Institute
Alexandrine Pirlot de Corbion, Privacy International

Detailed description of the workshop is available here http ://www .intgovforum .org /cms /worksh o ps /list -of -published -workshop -proposals

Transcript of the workshop is available here http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/187-igf-2015/transcripts-igf-2015/2407-2015-11-12-ws-155-encryption-and-anonymity-rights-and-risks-workshop-room-1

Video link available here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUrBP4PsfJo

IV. Chalmers & Associates organised a session on A Dialogue on Zero Rating and Network Neutrality at the Main Meeting Hall from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm on 12 November, 2015. The Dialogue provided access to expert insight on zero-rating and a full spectrum of diverse views on this issue. The Dialogue also explored alternative approaches to zero rating such as use of community networks. Pranesh Prakash provided a detailed explanation of harms and benefits related to different approaches to zero-rating. The panellists for this session were the following.

Jochai Ben-Avie, Senior Global Policy Manager, Mozilla, USA
Igor Vilas Boas de Freitas, Commissioner, ANATEL, Brazil
Dušan Caf, Chairman, Electronic Communications Council, Republic of Slovenia
Silvia Elaluf-Calderwood, Research Fellow, London School of Economics, UK/Peru
Belinda Exelby, Director, Institutional Relations, GSMA, UK
Helani Galpaya, CEO, LIRNEasia, Sri Lanka
Anka Kovacs, Director, Internet Democracy Project, India
Kevin Martin, VP, Mobile and Global Access Policy, Facebook, USA
Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director, CIS India
Steve Song, Founder, Village Telco, South Africa/Canada
Dhanaraj Thakur, Research Manager, Alliance for Affordable Internet, USA/West Indies
Christopher Yoo, Professor of Law, Communication, and Computer & Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Detailed description of the workshop is available here http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/igf2015-main-sessions

Transcript of the workshop is available here http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/187-igf-2015/transcripts-igf-2015/2457-2015-11-12-a-dialogue-on-zero-rating-and-network-neutrality-main-meeting-hall-2

V. The Internet & Jurisdiction Project organised a workshop on Transnational Due Process: A Case Study in MS Cooperation at Workshop Room 4 from 11:00 am to 12:00 pm on 13 November, 2015. The workshop discussion focused on the challenges in developing an enforcement framework for the internet that guarantees transnational due process and legal interoperability. The discussion also focused on innovative approaches to multi-stakeholder cooperation such as issue-based networks, inter-sessional work methods and transnational policy standards. The panellists for this discussion were the following.

Anne Carblanc Head of Division, Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry, OECD
Eileen Donahoe Director Global Affairs, Human Rights Watch
Byron Holland President and CEO, CIRA (Canadian ccTLD)
Christopher Painter Coordinator for Cyber Issues, US Department of State
Sunil Abraham Executive Director, CIS India
Alice Munyua Lead dotAfrica Initiative and GAC representative, African Union Commission
Will Hudsen Senior Advisor for International Policy, Google
Dunja Mijatovic Representative on Freedom of the Media, OSCE
Thomas Fitschen Director for the United Nations, for International Cooperation against Terrorism and for Cyber Foreign Policy, German Federal Foreign Office
Hartmut Glaser Executive Secretary, Brazilian Internet Steering Committee
Matt Perault, Head of Policy Development Facebook

Detailed description of the workshop is available here http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/workshops/list-of-published-workshop-proposals

Transcript of the workshop is available here http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/187-igf-2015/transcripts-igf-2015/2475-2015-11-13-ws-132-transnational-due-process-a-case-study-in-ms-cooperation-workshop-room-4

Video link Transnational Due Process: A Case Study in MS Cooperation available here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9jVovhQhd0

VI. The Internet Governance Project organised a meeting of the Dynamic Coalition on Accountability of Internet Governance Venues at Workshop Room 2 from 14:00 – 15:30 on 12 November, 2015. The coalition brought together panelists to highlight the challenges in developing an accountability framework for internet governance venues that include setting up standards and developing a set of concrete criteria. Jyoti Panday provided the perspective of civil society on why acountability is necessary in internet governance processes and organizations. The panelists for this workshop included the following.

Robin Gross, IP Justice
Jeanette Hofmann, Director Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society
Farzaneh Badiei, Internet Governance Project
Erika Mann, Managing Director Public PolicyPolicy Facebook and Board of Directors ICANN
Paul Wilson, APNIC
Izumi Okutani, Japan Network Information Center (JPNIC)
Keith Drazek , Verisign
Jyoti Panday, CIS
Jorge Cancio, GAC representative

Detailed description of the workshop is available here http://igf2015.sched.org/event/4c23/dynamic-coalition-on-accountability-of-internet-governance-venues?iframe=no&w=&sidebar=yes&bg=no

Video link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIxyGhnch7w

VII. Digital Infrastructure Netherlands Foundation organized an open forum at Workshop Room 3 from 11:00 – 12:00 on 10 November, 2015. The open forum discussed the increase in government engagement with “the internet” to protect their citizens against crime and abuse and to protect economic interests and critical infrastructures. It brought together panelists topresent ideas about an agenda for the international protection of ‘the public core of the internet’ and to collect and discuss ideas for the formulation of norms and principles and for the identification of practical steps towards that goal. Pranesh Prakash participated in the e open forum. Other speakers included

Bastiaan Goslings AMS-IX, NL
Pranesh Prakash CIS, India
Marilia Maciel (FGV, Brasil
Dennis Broeders (NL Scientific Council for Government Policy)

Detailed description of the open forum is available here http://schd.ws/hosted_files/igf2015/3d/DINL_IGF_Open%20Forum_The_public_core_of_the_internet.pdf

Video link available here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joPQaMQasDQ

VIII. UNESCO, Council of Europe, Oxford University, Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, Google, Internet Society organised a workshop on hate speech and youth radicalisation at Room 9 on Thursday, November 12. UNESCO shared the initial outcome from its commissioned research on online hate speech including practical recommendations on combating against online hate speech through understanding the challenges, mobilizing civil society, lobbying private sectors and intermediaries and educating individuals with media and information literacy. The workshop also discussed how to help empower youth to address online radicalization and extremism, and realize their aspirations to contribute to a more peaceful and sustainable world. Sunil Abraham provided his inputs. Other speakers include

1. Chaired by Ms Lidia Brito, Director for UNESCO Office in Montevideo

2.Frank La Rue, Former Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression

3. Lillian Nalwoga, President ISOC Uganda and rep CIPESA, Technical community

4. Bridget O’Loughlin, CoE, IGO

5. Gabrielle Guillemin, Article 19

6. Iyad Kallas, Radio Souriali

7. Sunil Abraham executive director of Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore, India

8. Eve Salomon, global Chairman of the Regulatory Board of RICS

9. Javier Lesaca Esquiroz, University of Navarra

10. Representative GNI

11. Remote Moderator: Xianhong Hu, UNESCO

12. Rapporteur: Guilherme Canela De Souza Godoi, UNESCO

Detailed description of the workshop is available here http://igf2015.sched.org/event/4c1X/ws-128-mitigate-online-hate-speech-and-youth-radicalisation?iframe=no&w=&sidebar=yes&bg=no

Video link to the panel is available here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIO1z4EjRG0

INTERMEDIARY LIABILITY

IX. Electronic Frontier Foundation, Centre for Internet Society India, Open Net Korea and Article 19 collaborated to organize a workshop on the Manila Principles on Intermediary Liability at Workshop Room 9 from 11:00 am to 12:00 pm on 13 November 2015. The workshop elaborated on the Manila Principles, a high level principle framework of best practices and safeguards for content restriction practices and addressing liability for intermediaries for third party content. The workshop saw particpants engaged in over lapping projects considering restriction practices coming togetehr to give feedback and highlight recent developments across liability regimes. Jyoti Panday laid down the key details of the Manila Principles framework in this session. The panelists for this workshop included the following.

Kelly Kim Open Net Korea,
Jyoti Panday, CIS India,
Gabrielle Guillemin, Article 19,
Rebecca McKinnon on behalf of UNESCO
Giancarlo Frosio, Center for Internet and Society, Stanford Law School
Nicolo Zingales, Tilburg University
Will Hudson, Google

Detailed description of the workshop is available here http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/workshops/list-of-published-workshop-proposals

Transcript of the workshop is available here http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/187-igf-2015/transcripts-igf-2015/2423-2015-11-13-ws-242-the-manila-principles-on-intermediary-liability-workshop-room-9

Video link available here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFLmzxXodjs

ACCESSIBILITY

X. Dynamic Coalition on Accessibility and Disability and Global Initiative for Inclusive ICTs organised a workshop on Empowering the Next Billion by Improving Accessibility at Workshop Room 6 from 9:00 am to 10:30 am on 13 November, 2015. The discussion focused on the need and ways to remove accessibility barriers which prevent over one billion potential users to benefit from the Internet, including for essential services. Sunil Abraham specifically spoke about the lack of compliance of existing ICT infrastructure with well established accessibility standards specifically relating to accessibility barriers in the disaster management process. He discussed the barriers faced by persons with physical or psychosocial disabilities. The panelists for this discussion were the following.

Francesca Cesa Bianchi, G3ICT
Cid Torquato, Government of Brazil
Carlos Lauria, Microsoft Brazil
Sunil Abraham, CIS India
Derrick L. Cogburn, Institute on Disability and Public Policy (IDPP) for the ASEAN(Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Region
Fernando H. F. Botelho, F123 Consulting
Gunela Astbrink, GSA InfoComm

Detailed description of the workshop is available here http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/workshops/list-of-published-workshop-proposals

Transcript of the workshop is available here http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/187-igf-2015/transcripts-igf-2015/2438-2015-11-13-ws-253-empowering-the-next-billion-by-improving-accessibility-workshop-room-3

Video Link Empowering the next billion by improving accessibility https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RZlWvJAXxs

OPENNESS

XI. A workshop on FOSS & a Free, Open Internet: Synergies for Development was organized at Workshop Room 7 from 2:00 pm to 3:30 pm on 13 November, 2015. The discussion was focused on the increasing risk to openness of the internet and the ability of present & future generations to use technology to improve their lives. The panel shred different perspectives about the future co-development of FOSS and a free, open Internet; the threats that are emerging; and ways for communities to surmount these. Sunil Abraham emphasised the importance of free software, open standards, open access and access to knowledge and the lack of this mandate in the draft outcome document for upcoming WSIS+10 review and called for inclusion of the same. Pranesh Prakash further contributed to the discussion by emphasizing the need for free open source software with end‑to‑end encryption and traffic level encryption based on open standards which are decentralized and work through federated networks. The panellists for this discussion were the following.

Satish Babu, Technical Community, Chair, ISOC-TRV, Kerala, India
Judy Okite, Civil Society, FOSS Foundation for Africa
Mishi Choudhary, Private Sector, Software Freedom Law Centre, New York
Fernando Botelho, Private Sector, heads F123 Systems, Brazil
Sunil Abraham, CIS India
Pranesh Prakash, CIS India
Nnenna Nwakanma- WWW.Foundation
Yves MIEZAN EZO, Open Source strategy consultant
Corinto Meffe, Advisor to the President and Directors, SERPRO, Brazil
Frank Coelho de Alcantara, Professor, Universidade Positivo, Brazil
Caroline Burle, Institutional and International Relations, W3C Brazil Office and Center of Studies on Web Technologies

Detailed description of the workshop is available here http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/workshops/list-of-published-workshop-proposals

Transcript of the workshop is available here http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/187-igf-2015/transcripts-igf-2015/2468-2015-11-13-ws10-foss-and-a-free-open-internet-synergies-for-development-workshop-room-7

Video link available here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwUq0LTLnDs

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/summary-report-internet-governance-forum-2015

Summary of UID Public Meeting, August 25 2010

praskrishna — 2011-08-02T07:28:46Z

A summary of the "No UID" public meeting that took place on Aug. 25th at the Constitution Club, New Dehli.

The Meeting and Project

On August 25, 2010 in Delhi, a public meeting was organized by civil society groups from Mumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi to discuss and answer questions surrounding the UID, and to present the concerns of the public to members of parliament. The meeting was successful, with many important concerns raised by both the speakers and the audience. An action plan was developed, and MPs were able to come, listen, and share their opinions.

The Project

The UID is a project that is supported by the government of India, and is led by Nandan Nilekani, the former CEO of Infosys. The project is being presented as a cure to the PDS system, as a mechanism to bring benefits to the poor, and as a project that will make India an inclusive society by providing every citizen with a verifiable identity. The draft National Identification Authority of India Bill will be placed before the Lok Sabha in the current session. If the Bill is approved by parliament, the official implementation of the Bill will take place in Winter 2010 -2011.

Technological Flaws

Speaking first, Jude D'Souza, a free software professional, presented the entire technical aspect of the UID scheme. He became involved with the UID project through his work on biometrics, and he expressed shock that the UID scheme would rely on a deeply flawed system such as biometrics. Flaws in such a system include -- but are not limited to -- duplication, verification problems, and the lack of infrastructure needed to collect biometrics properly. Explaining in detail how fingerprint and iris scanners work, he showed how both are actually very simple technologies. An iris scanner is essentially a camera coupled with auto-focusing. The camera focuses on one’s eye, takes a snapshot, and then divides the eye into concentric segments, conducts a type of numbering scheme for each segment, and then generates a number that represents the pattern. A fingerprint scanner works in a similar manner. First a picture is taken of your finger-print, the system then generates an inverted image of the finger, with darker areas representing more reflected light and lighter areas representing less reflected light. The image is then compared against the stored fingerprint. Both technologies are easily spoofed. Iris scanners cannot detect contact lenses, and a scientist in Japan found that fingerprint scanners can be “tricked” easily with materials costing under 10 dollars. D'Souza explained how all identification systems go through an enrollment and authentication process which includes: the capturing of the image, the processing of the image, extraction of features, the creation of a template, encryption, duplication and storage of the information. If a step in either the enrollment or authentication process goes wrong, the whole process is brought back to square one – manual recording of information. For instance, if a fingerprint is swiped, and the machine cannot read it because it has changed with age, or the machine is malfunctioning, or the fingerprint is logged with water (something that is not uncommon in India) – the person would either have to re-enroll, and then re-verify who they are manually. If this scenario applies to, say, someone coming into a hospital, the consequences of his/her fingerprints not being read are grave.

Another concern is the compromising of the system. Bogus templates can easily be created and switched with the real template, key duplication is possible, or the system could be hacked and a virus introduced. In general, it is dangerous when any database containing personal information is compromised; a database that contains biometrics is twice as dangerous. D'Souza closed his presentation by making the point that biometrics cannot be withdrawn – if your password (biometrics) is compromised, you are still stuck with it for life. Once you leave your footprint through biometrics, it is irrevocable.

Civil Rights

The second speaker of the day was Usha Ramanathan, an internationally recognized expert on law and poverty, who spoke on human rights and the UID. From the beginning of her presentation she challenged the audience to think deeply about the question “Why would the government want to put this project in place?” She brought to the table many points about how the project violates human rights, including the fact that no type of feasibility study has been done on the technology or the financial cost of the project; a white paper was never issued at the genesis of the project; and Nandan Nilekani and other members of the authority refused directly to answer the concerns brought forth to them when they were approached. To her, the corporatization of the project is also very clear. From the marketing of the scheme, to the implementation of the scheme, to the fact that the convergence of databases will allow business and corporate powers to network using individual’s data that they obtain from the database – the issuance of a Unique Identification Number provides opportunities for huge profits to be made by corporations and the government. What makes the consequences of a UID number even more powerful is the fact that even though the Authority says that the number is voluntary, businesses, shop owners, banks and hospitals have the ability to deny access if one does not have number. In this way, the number is at least de-facto compulsory. This number also threatens violations to an individual’s privacy.

Benefits to the Poor

When analyzing the benefits to the poor that the number promises, the picture begins to look less and less beneficial. The Authority has been stressing the benefit of the portability of a Unique Identification Number. The positive aspects of having a portable ID stem from the idea that a person living in one village could be traveling and would still be able to collect his or her rations from the Free Trade Shop in the location he or she is visiting. No longer would people have to return home to collect their rations. Though this seems to be a useful benefit indeed, problems begin to arise if the Free Trade Shop in that village does not have enough grain in stock to provide for the unexpected visitor or if the biometric data malfunction. Other complications that the poor might have with a unique ID number is that to enroll you must know your address and name, and be able to spell them correctly. When looking at if the UID will plug the leakages of the PDS system, it will perhaps make the delivery of grain more efficient – theoretically it could stop the use of fake ration cards etc, but it does not stop the waste of grain, and at the end of the day – it still only a number, it does not regulate the person authenticating the individual and distributing the grain. Other difficulties the rural populations face are power outages: what if the power goes out – no one can be authenticated, what if the notice that benefits are available are electronically transmitted and do not arrive? What if data are lost during power outages?

Response of the Audience

After lunch the floor was opened up to discussion about steps that need to be taken in the future. It was determined that academics need to be consulted, the NO UID campaign needs to be presented in a language that everyone can understand and relate to, more political leaders need to be contacted, volunteers from Universities need to be recruited, petitions need to be written, and emails and contact information shared for open communication amongst each other. Another response from the audience was that privacy is an issue for the elite – the poor are concerned with surviving day to day. What is interesting, though, is how untrue that is. The issuance of a UID number brings privacy of the poor into the limelight. Privacy is a question of a person’s ability to control individual information, to know how it is being used, and by whom. A Unique Identification Number given to the poor suddenly places all of his or her personal data on the grid. It places it into networks, business databases, and governmental data banks. The current lack of data protection and lack of control an individual has over these data under the scheme creates a privacy crisis for anyone who has a number. And, given the ability to deny services to someone who does not have a number, it creates a crisis for those who opt out as well.

The Opinion of the MPs

Many of the MPs were unable to come, but the two who did were in opposition to the UID. MP Syed Azeez Pasha (CPI) commented on the need for a campaign to have started earlier, while Senior Member of Parliament from the Revolutionary Socialist Party of India (RSP) Abani Roy called for the launching of a massive campaign to resist this expensive and dangerous project through which several companies will gain massive contracts from the public exchequer.

Conclusion

As the UID project continues to unroll, it seems that that Nandan Nilekani has imagined a new India – one that looks to technology as its solution to its political and social problems. If this is the case, a UID number that will work to shift the entire population onto a digital database could just be the beginning of many other changes to come. Indian citizens should carefully consider if this is the India that they have imagined.

Resources from the Meeting

D'Souza powerpoint presentation

UID Booklet

UID Appeal to MPs

UID in Hindi

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/UID-public-meeting

Summary of the Minutes of the Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics

praskrishna — 2012-01-30T16:24:40Z

The Western Ghats Portal team had organized a one-day workshop to explore the contemporary state of biodiversity informatics as expressed in three spheres: technology behind biodiversity informatics, scientific commons and policy and biodiversity portals in India. It hoped to provide an opportunity to interact and learn from similar endeavors in this emerging discipline. The workshop was held at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment (ATREE), Bangalore on 25 November 2011.

There were 5 speakers and 10 panelists representing as many portal initiatives, participating at the venue or via WebEx, addressing an audience of 75 comprising of students, researchers, representatives from governmental bodies and technological platforms.The entire day’s sessions were peppered with questions and discussions, directed to the presenters as also within the members of the audience.

The technology session presented an Indian initiative, Bhuvan, a geospatial data alternative to GoogleEarth that was pertinent to the India centric audience. The second presentation was the Atlas of Living Australia, an international endeavor that was able to give a broad overview of how government funding for the sharing of government data on a public platform was able to source large information and present it for open access on a portal. The project aims to serve a variety of users from scientists, citizen scientists to policy makers and activists in biodiversity and conservation. The WGP was presented by a discussion of architecture and design of participation interface for recording and accumulating biodiversity observation data. The scientific commons and policy session covered a wide range of topics: the interpretation of the Indian laws for portal developments across disciplines, the governmental policies that may hinder the development of Open source platforms, the creative commons licenses and how they work for scientific data, and whether developing a biodiversity commons would help the community at large.

Global initiatives in the area of scientific commons were presented. Views from the participants on various aspects and the practicality of a legal framework were discussed. There are plans to discuss and evolve a draft of a charter for scientific commons that would be relevant for biodiversity and conservation. A clearly articulated and agreed data policy is also one of the deliverables of the project.

The third session centred on the experience of India-centric biodiversity portals. Two of the panelists presented their portals and attended the session over WebEx from the United States. A spectrum of portals was presented. Some of them were focused on single taxa, or a theme focus from medicinal plants to thematic citizen science initiatives. The IBP and WGP were presented as broad based with large collections of spatial data and species data. Perspective plans of large biodiversity portal initiatives, like the GBIF node for India, INBIF, were outlines to showing the things that may come in the next few years.

The discussions revolved around scientific rigor versus citizen participation, large-scale projects v/s small-scale focused portals, and maintaining quality with crowd sourced data. Ideas about how peer recognition and scientific status could be achieved were discussed. Focused portals closely managed by experts to provide valuate biodiversity and species data were discussed, with methods of maintaining quality and curating data. The event concluded by discussions of how each portal can maintain its identity and focus but at the same time evolve mechanisms for interoperability and exchange of information. There were open discussions on whether we can network and provide easy toolkits for building focused participation sites.

Minutes of the Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics

Objectives of the Workshop

Over the last few years, Biodiversity Informatics has emerged as a field to aggregate and consolidate biodiversity information across the world. With the increased penetration of the Internet into developing economies, and the widespread adoption of web technologies, biodiversity informatics has spawned an impressive variety of initiatives. These initiatives range from global knowledge bases and networks, national initiatives, eco-region based initiatives, as well as sharply focused initiatives which address a single species or event. There have been tangible advantages for stakeholders from these initiatives which has inspired many other endeavors. Success stories exist at both global and local level, and learning from these experiences can help one understand the multi-faceted nature of this discipline.

The Western Ghats Portal team organized a one-day workshop to explore the contemporary state of biodiversity informatics as expressed in three spheres: i) technology behind biodiversity informatics, ii) scientific commons and policy and iii) biodiversity portals in India. The workshop was intended to bring together technologists, open data policy experts, leaders of portal initiatives and user groups and stakeholders to meet and discuss experiences and approaches to Biodiversity Informatics.

Seventy five participants attended the workshop covering governmental agencies, NGO’s, academic institutes, student groups, CEPF grantees and other relevant stakeholders. There were 5 speakers and 10 panelists representing as many portal initiatives, participating at the venue or via WebEx from the continents of Australia and North America.

Plenary I: Technology behind biodiversity informatics - 0930 - 1115 hrs

This session was introduced by Dr.B.Ramesh of the French Institute of Pondicherry, who welcomed the participants of the workshop. He highlighted the growth of Biodiversity Informatics leveraging the Internet. In this emerging discipline, stressed the need to take stock of the latest developments in the area.

Development of Information System, Open Data standards, Archive and Geospatial solutions, Visualization in Bhuvan - M. Arulraj, National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).

Arulraj gave an overview of the Bhuvan project, ISRO’s geo-portal serving as a rich geteway to Indian earth observations. The project was launched in August 2009 and has made rapid strides since then to expose earth observation images and thematic maps on the Indian sub-continent. The Bhuvan project has multiple modules, which include 3-D and 2-D visualizations; a data archive and data download; thematic land use and land cover maps; a mobile application; and a discussion forum. The project is in active development and in beta, but is adding many features and data to the portal. In addition to data dissemination it provides a webGIS platform with the ability to do analyses and create geographical layers by users. The Bhuvan portal conforms to the national map policy while exposing spatial information and imagery through its evolving portal.

Arulraj explained the architecture of the portal and surveyed the webGIS and open source technologies that were available. A demo terminal of Bhuvan was exposed during the lunch session. During the discussions on map policy, Arulraj quoted that as per Remote Sensing Data Policy (RSDP)-2011, all satellite data of resolutions up to 1 m shall be distributed on a nondiscriminatory basis and on “as requested basis” by NRSC/ISRO.

Architecture and design of participation interfaces - Anand Janakiraman, Western Ghats Portal

Anand Janakiram spoke about the design of participation interfaces for the Western Ghats portal. The intent was to engage with user groups on the user interfaces and usability of an observation interface, where users will be able to upload a multi-media object; provide a location for the observation; make a species call with a certain level of confidence; and provide notes and comments on the observation. The observation will be rated by the crowd. Species calls could be changed if necessary and agreed or disagreed upon.

Various rating systems were discussed. These included a 5 or ten star rating system, like movie rating systems; a multi-dimensional rating system like in Wikipedia; a “like” rating system that is used in many sites; and an expert based rating system. There was a lot of discussion on rating systems among the participants concerning the necessity of an expert based system; the wisdom of the public in identifications; a simple and easy to use rating system on the portal.

Challenges on the emerging discipline of Biodiversity Informatics - Donald Hobern, Atlas of Living Australia - Web participation.

Donald Hobern participated in the session from Australia over the Internet. His talk and presentation was viewed by the participants via two-way WebEx where he answered questions and interacted with the audience.

Donald presented the Australian Government supported multi-institutional project called the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA). The ALA is a multi-institutional project with large funding to build a comprehensive biodiversity site focused on Australia. The conceptual model for the portal is to build a platform that will aggregate biodiversity information resources from specimen records, field observations, literature, images, experts and amateurs. The information will be integrated as species pages, distributions, regional atlases, and nomenclature. Through this, the portal aims to serve a whole range of users ranging from researchers, taxonomists, land-use planners, and conservation and park managers.

Donald explained the typical specimen, field occurrence and occurrence data and how it is the data is presented via collections. He also explained the services to manage sensitive data and name services available to the public through APIs. The ALA also has rich mapping tools that help relate biodiversity to spatial parameters like rainfall, temperature and other abiotic and biotic factors.

ALA also develops user communities among various stakeholders that include resource management groups, conservation groups, ecological researchers, environmental agencies, field naturalists and taxonomy researchers. They also develop specific use cases and applications for each of these groups.

The questions and interaction session was animated, even though it was on the Internet. One of the issues raised was that the ALA seems to be building an all encompassing and comprehensive portal, without any particular focus theme or focus group. How was the planning of features and functions being done? Donald’s response was the portal team would build functions that they thought would be useful and then engage with user groups to better and fine-tune the application. They engage with user groups about functions on the portal.

The Western Ghats Portal team would like to thank Donald Hobern for his active participation in the workshop with a valued presentation on the state-of-the-art of a comprehensive biodiversity portal.

Plenary II: Scientific commons and policy - 1130 - 1300 hrs

The session was chaired by Dr. Ravi Chellam of the Madras Crocodile Bank Trust. Ravi introduced the session and the speakers. The idea was to generate discussions on data sharing policy among the participants in the context of the Indian legal framework of map policy, biodiversity act, intellectual property, scientific creative commons, and the culture and attitude of Indian scientists. Ravi suggested that the session should lead to further discussions to evolve a policy for data sharing among biodiversity and conservation researchers and to evolve a charter for the best practices among the community.

Commons in the context of Biodiversity Information - Danish Sheikh, Alternative Law Forum

Danish Sheikh from the Alternate Law Forum (ALF) discussed the creative commons and stressed that it maintains the copyright of the contributor. Creative Commons only specifies the terms of sharing the information and in today’s Internet driven world open access to information was essential. With a complex legal framework of creative commons, map policy, biodiversity act, and research interests of individuals, for sharing biodiversity data we must consider property versus propriety. The sharing of information on the portal must be seen from the non-commercial and academic nature of the information as well as the use of data for social good of conservation. Government data in the form of maps and reports should be sharable on an artistic license and they could be deployed on the portal. In the sharing of biodiversity information, there are no concrete cases of violations of laws and thus there are no examples to learn from.

Danish Sheikh had prepared a draft of declaration to be discussed and agreed upon by the community. This was to be circulated to the participants, comments solicited and a broad consensus evolved on the best practices for sharing biodiversity information. The discussions centered on the map policy and the need to carefully study the map policy and the biodiversity act from a legal perspective and arrive at a policy for the portal that will conform to the laws and acts in India.

Open data in the scientific realm - Sunil Abraham, Centre for Internet and Society

Sunil Abraham from the Center for Internet and Society (CIS) spoke on various national and international initiatives on open data in the scientific realm. National consultations and discussions have been going on towards evolving a National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (NDSAP) among scientists and researchers in the country. The principle of the policy is based on openness, flexibility, transparency, legal conformity, protection of intellectual property, formal responsibility, and professionalism. Based on these principles, various definitions have evolved. He stressed upon a clear articulation of non-sharable data in the negative list based upon the legal framework and Right to Information Act; restricted access data and open access data.

Sunil Abraham also discussed various international initiatives on scientific data sharing especially in the ecology and biodiversity realm. He spoke of the Eye on Earth initiative for evolving a sharing policy, the framework of the Shared European Environment Information System (SEIS) and various standards for data sharing.

Discussions were around the issues of motivations for data sharing and building social networks and peer encouragement for data sharing. He opined that there was no recipe for engaging the crowd towards building and participating on social networks and sharing information.

Sunil also suggested that the community should evolve a best practices policy document by discussions and debates among themselves. CIS should be seen as a service provider and advocate for evolving a shared policy and lobbying with government if necessary. But the biodiversity community should provide the lead in this effort and the CIS would only be advisory.

Plenary III - Biodiversity portals in India - 1400 - 1700 hrs

The session was moderated by MD Madhusudan of the Nature Conservation Foundation, Mysore. Over the last few years there has been a multitude of portals focused on aggregating and publishing biodiversity information of the Indian sub-continent. Some of these portals are focused upon a region or taxa or subject of interest and some portals address a wider canvas of issues on biodiversity and conservation. The session was focused on presentations by each of the portals, presenting the key features and focus of their portals; the experience of building and running the portals; key lessons learnt and future plans for the portal.

The response for the sessions on biodiversity was enthusiastic. Over 12 portal initiatives were presented. Some of the presentations were by participants in the United States, who run portals on India. The presentations and participation was done over WebEx sessions overcoming the challenge of different time zones.

Madhusudhan moderated the session, keeping focus, and allowing time for discussions and debates.

V.B Mathur, Indian Biodiversity Information Facility (InBIF)

VB Mathur presented plans for a GBIF node to be set up in India at the Wildlife Institute of India called Indian Biodiversity Facility (InBIF). The project is just being initiated and is conceived as a broad and participative initiative to address the challenges to conservation in the 21st century India. With a growing economy, the objective is to provide biodiversity information to build sustainable development for larger and inclusive populations of India. The InBIF has developed a vision and mission statement and will produce a concept paper by a consultative process by next year 2012. InBIF recognizes that such an inclusive biodiversity portal will require significant funding and the involvement of already present biodiversity portals. InBIF proposes to seek substantial funding based on the concept paper via the 12th Five-Year-Plan period starting 2012-2013.

Suhel Quader, Season Watch (http://www.seasonwatch.in), Migrant Watch (http://www.migrantwatch.in)

Suhel Quader presented two portals Seasons Watch and Migrant Watch focused on citizen science initiatives. The Seasons Watch portal is focused on the observation and recording of seasons as revealed by trees, by their fruiting, flowering and leaf fall patterns. About 100 species are observed all over the country. Migrant Watch observes the arrival and departure of migrant bird species across the sub-continent. Both these large citizen science efforts are focused on the recording and understanding of seasons to create a base-line of data on seasons and their variations. These sites are driven by questions and hypotheses. The sites have an active citizen participation. The portals are planning to expand significantly into school networks. The data generated by citizens are freely available on the portals and it encourages others to download, explore, analyze and publish analysis on the data accumulated on the portal.

Sanjay Molur, Pterocount (http://www.pterocount.org/)

Sanjay Molur presented Pterocount a South Asian bat monitoring program. The project is aimed at creating awareness about bat conservation issues and developing data on the status of South Asian bat populations. There are about 3500 species of bats and data on the bat roosts and their populations is collected through online portals as well as offline forms. The information from all these sites will be compiled and analyzed for trends in the population of bats, to identify key threats to roosts and to provide recommendations for their conservation. The data collected is contributed to the IUCN and is shared with other researchers under creative commons licenses. The study is currently focused on a single bat species Pteropus giganteus, but plans to expand to other bat species as well.

Suma Tagadur, Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions (http://envis.frlht.org)

Sathya Sangeetha presented the medicinal plants’ envis site maintained by the Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions. The site is focused on the development of a database for medicinal plants with details of taxonomy, local names, status, distribution and trade. The site undertakes a systematic update for 12 medicinal plants per year. They also study the conservation status of medicinal plants and help in the identification of a plant red list. They have plans to develop a children’s portal for increasing awareness of medicinal plants among children. With a focused agenda, the site has a specific and valuable role in biodiversity and conservation of India.

Ramesh BR - Western Ghats Portal (http://www.thewesternghats.in/)

BR Ramesh presented the Western Ghats Portal. This is a relatively young initiative launched about six months ago building on the India Biodiversity Portal. The focus of the portal is to collect biodiversity and conservation information on the Western Ghats, a biodiversity hotspot. The portal has a map module, a species pages module, a collaborative module and integrative theme pages. The portal has aggregated significant available data on the Western Ghats and deployed it on the portal. The portal plans to add an observation recording interface and campaign for large scale participation on the portal, and species identification keys.

Shwetank Verma, Biodiversity of India, formerly Project Brahma (http://www.biodiversityofindia.org)

Shwetank Verma presented the Biodiversity of India Portal. The portal is developed and managed completely by voluntary effort, and is aimed at being a wiki resource on the biodiversity of India. The site aggregates data on Indian biodiversity from various public sites and presents it attractively on the portal. It has an effective search engine LigerCat that helps index all information on the portal. It aims to add and enrich information on the human and cultural aspects of species and their uses. The portal is keen on networking and sharing information with other biodiversity sites by building necessary APIs for interactions between various biodiversity sites.

Krushnamegh Kunte, ifoundbutterflies (http://ifoundbutterflies.org/) web participation

Krushnamegh Kunte presented the ifoundbutterfiles portal over a WebEx session from the United States. ifoundbutterflies is a community site on the butterflies of India. It contains information on species pages, life cycle pages, photographs, and identification keys of over 600 species of butterflies in India. All information is carefully peer review and curated a team of biologists studying and researching butterflies. The data is assuredly authenticated and verified and will form a reliable source of butterfly information on India.

Vijay Barve, DiversityIndia (http://diversityindia.org/) web participation

Vijay Barve presented the DiversityIndia, a social network group over a WebEx session from the United States. The effort started off as a yahoo group and then moved to facebook as a more convenient platform to share information on the biodiversity of India. It plans to aggregate the information posted in these groups into a site that will maintain and develop biodiversity databases. The group is open to sharing information and resources with other portals working on the biodiversity of India.

Deepak Menon, India Water Portal (http://www.indiawaterportal.org/)

Samuel Rajkumar presented the India Water Portal. Their portal is supported by campaigning for participation and awareness among various fora on water resources. The features include a question bank and an interaction with experts on water; a data repository on water; and a children’s section. The portal is currently working on a data project aimed at accumulating a large repository of water related data on the portal for open access. The portal intends on expanding with a map component and a data visualization module.

Chitra Ravi, India Biodiversity Portal (http://indiabiodiversity.org/)

Chitra Ravi presented the India Biodiversity Portal. The portal was started in 2008 after the first phase of portal development. Over the past year, the portal has been enriched with checklists and species pages. The portal is closely integrated with the Western Ghats Portal sharing the platform, its features and the data. A comparison of the availability of data in EOL showed that for the lesser known flora and fauna, there is very little information publicly available. The portal expects to fill this gap, by generating rich species and distribution content for Indian species.

M.D. Madhusudhan, Status of Golden Jackals in India

MD Madhusudhan presented a focused and time-based project on the Golden Jackals on India. The site campaigned and crowd sourced on the current and historical occurrence of the golden jackal in India. The enthusiasm for participation was evident with large data collection. The data was analyzed and made available publicly and freely to whoever wanted to use the data. There was a need felt for a generic portal to support such focused time-based crowd sourcing and citizen science efforts.

K.Sankara Rao, Centre for Ecological Sciences, IISc

K Sankara Rao, presented the Center for Ecological Sciences’ creation of a virtual herbarium database from the rich herbarium available at the Institute. The herbarium is Father Saldhana’s collection on the flora of Karnataka and has the best representation of plant specimens of Karnataka. The effort to digitize the herbarium is a passionate project that will make the herbarium resources to be more widely available. Sankara Rao requested volunteers to come forward and work on the project.

Discussions and summary of the day:

The discussions centered on a range of topics and concerns for Biodiversity Informatics in India. They focused on the following themes:

Large and comprehensive portals versus narrow and focused portals. While focused portals seem efficient in achieving their objectives, large portals are trying to explore different mechanisms of harnessing and disseminating information. While such large and comprehensive portals are necessary, they will require larger efforts, longer periods and significant funding to deliver useful content in biodiversity.

Participation and Quality. There were different views on crowd sourcing information and validation mechanisms. The importance of expert-driven efforts on ensuring quality was appreciated, while there was recognition that amateur naturalists and hobbyists could be very knowledgeable and reliable.

The scientific status of a portal can be enhanced with careful expert driven peer review mechanism. Portals could also serve as repositories for data papers publications and citations that would be valued by the scientific community. Target users for the portal. Discussions on target users for the portal covered the whole spectrum from specialists and scientists to activists and concerned citizens. A biodiversity portal was expected to provide information to a variety of users and stakeholders, including managers and policy makers.

Data exchange between portals: There was a general consensus on the interaction and exchange of data among portals. This was heartening to note, but since all the portals are new and evolving, mechanisms of exchange and building APIs for exchange was lower in priority for most portals. However, all portals were open to sharing information. Many of the citizen science portals have made their data public and downloadable.

There were discussions on larger projects like the WGP to engage in technology facilitation for various citizen science projects. This was discussed and opportunities for such technology facilitation need to be explored.

Various mechanisms, such as quiz competitions, interaction with experts, bio-blitzes, campaigns and road shows; to involve and engage citizens on the portal were discussed. There were open-ended discussions on how each portal can maintain its identity and focus, but at the same time evolve mechanisms for interoperability and exchange of information, and on whether we can network and provide easy tool kits for building focused participation sites.

Dr. Prabhakar, concluded the event with a thank you note and by expressing hope that the biodiversity conservation community can build together on the momentum the workshop has created.

List of participants present at the Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics, 25th November, 2011, ATREE, Bangalore

Sr.No	Name	Affiliation	Role
1	Abhisheka	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
2	Ajith Ashokan	Mar Athanasios College for Advanced Studies Tiruvalla (MACFAST), Kerala	Audience
3	Amruta	Research and Action in Natural Wealth Administration (RANWA)	Audience
4	Anand Janakiraman	Western Ghats Portal	Speaker
5	Aneesh A	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
6	Anup Prasad K S	TCS, Bangalore	Audience
7	Anuradha S	University of Maryland, College Park	Audience
8	Aravind N A	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
9	Asha.A	Centre for Ecological Sciences - Indian Institute of Science (IISc)	Audience
10	Ashwini H S	Kuvempu University	Audience
11	Avinash K S	Kuvempu University	Audience
12	Baiju Raj	Agra bear rescue facility	Audience
13	Balasubramanian D	French Institute of Pondicherry	Audience
14	Baranidharan.K	Forest College and Research Institute	Audience
15	Chitra Ravi	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Panelist
16	Danish Sheikh	Alternate Law Forum	Speaker
17	Deepak Menon	ARGHYAM	Panelist
18	Devayani Khare	French Institute of Pondicherry	Audience
19	Dharnidharan	French Institute of Pondicherry	Audience
20	Dinesh T B	Servelots Infotech Pvt. ltd	Audience
21	Dr. B R Ramesh	French Institute of Pondicherry	Panelist
22	Dr. Bhaskar Acharya	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
23	Dr. Chikkaswamy	Om Bioscience Research	Audience
24	Dr. Easa	Asia Biodiversity Conservation Trust (ABCT)	Audience
25	Dr. Gautam Talukdar	Wildlife Institute of India	Audience
26	Dr. Gladwin Joseph	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
27	Dr. Jagdish Krishnaswamy	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
28	Dr. K N Ganeshaiah	University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore	Panelist
29	Dr. Karthikeyan Vasudevan	Wildlife Institute of India	Audience
30	Dr. L Shashikumar	Jnana Bharathi, Bangalore University	Audience
31	Dr. M H Swaminath	Addl. Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildife)	Audience
32	Dr. M Sanjappa	Botanical Survey of India(BSI)	Audience
33	Dr. N S Hallikhed	BISB	Audience
34	Dr. R Sukumar	Centre for Ecological Sciences (CES), IISc	Audience
35	Dr. Ravi Chellam	Madras Crocodile Bank Trust	Speaker
36	Dr. V B Mathur	Wildlife Institute of India	Panelist
37	G Areendran	Wildlife Institute of India	Audience
38	G Muthu Sankar	French Institute of Pondicherry	Audience
39	Harinandanan P V	Mar Athanasios College for Advanced Studies Tiruvalla (MACFAST), Kerala	Audience
40	Jagadish	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
41	Jyotish M S	Mar Athanasios College for Advanced Studies Tiruvalla (MACFAST), Kerala	Audience
42	Kavitha A	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
43	Kiran M C	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
44	Krushnamegh Kunte	Harvard University	Panelist
45	M Arulraj	National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC), Hyderabad	Speaker
46	M D Madhusudan	Nature Conservation Foundation	Audience
47	M Sathya Sangeetha	Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions	Audience
48	Madhura Niphadkar	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
49	Meganath V	Mar Athanasios College for Advanced Studies Tiruvalla (MACFAST), Kerala	Audience
50	Naveena N L	University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, Bangalore	Audience
51	Nishadh	Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History	Audience
52	Prashanth M B	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
53	Priti Gururaj	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
54	Prof. K Sankara Rao	Centre for Ecological Sciences - Indian Institute of Science (IISc)	Audience
55	R C Prasad	Spatial Informatics Lab, IIITHyderabad	Audience
56	Radhika Santhanam	Śramani	Audience
57	Rahul Yadava	Strand Life Sciences	Audience
58	Rajan Pilakandy	Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History	Audience
59	Rakesh K N	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
60	Ramesh Kannan	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
61	Ravikanth	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
62	Sabah Rubina	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
63	Samuel Rajkumar	Independent web-developer	Audience
64	Sangeetha Sathya	FRLTH-IAIM	Audience
65	Santosh S Gaikwad	Salim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History	Audience
66	Seena Narayanan K	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
67	Senthilkumar Umapathy	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
68	Shashank P R	University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, Bangalore	Audience
69	Shrinivas K R	Kuvempu University	Audience
70	Shwetank Verma	Indian Institute of Science (IISc)	Panelist
71	Sivarajan	French Institute of Pondicherry	Audience
72	Sreerupa Sen	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
73	Suhel Quader	National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS)
74	Suma Tagadur	Foundation for Revitalisation of Local Health Traditions	Panelist
75	Sunil Abraham	Centre for Internet and Society	Speaker
76	Supriya K S	National Center for Biological Sciences	Audience
77	T Bala	Keystone Foundation - Flora of Nilgiri	Audience
78	Veeranagappa P	University of Agricultural Sciences, GKVK, Bangalore	Audience
79	Vidyadhar Atkore	Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE)	Audience
80	Vijay Barve	Diversity India	Panelist

Also see Western Ghats Portal: Workshop on Biodiversity Informatics

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/summary-of-the-minutes-of-the-workshop-on-biodiversity-informatics

Summary of Judgements on Disability Rights

CLPR — 2014-05-23T09:23:13Z

The following are some of the landmark judgments given by the Supreme Court and some of the high courts in India on disability rights.

Supreme Court Decisions

Deaf Employees Welfare Association v Union of India[1]
This petition was filed seeking a Writ of Mandamus directing the Central and state governments to grant equal transport allowance to its government employees suffering from hearing impairment as what was being given to blind and other disabled government employees. The allowance given to the hearing impaired employees was significantly lower than the allowance granted to other employees with disabilities.

The Supreme Court allowed the petition and directed the Respondents to grant transport allowance to speech and hearing impaired persons also on par with blind and orthopaedically disabled government employees. The court held that “there cannot be further discrimination between a person with disability of ‘blindness’ and a person with disability of ‘hearing impairment’. Such discrimination has not been envisaged under the Disabilities Act.” It held that equality of law and equal protection of law afforded to all persons with disabilities while participating in government functions. The court held that the dignity of persons with hearing impairments must be protected by the state. Even the assumption that a hearing or speech impaired person is suffering less than a blind person is, in effect, marginalizing them; and as such, the same benefits must be given to them, as are awarded to blind citizens. Any move made by the state to further this objective is in consonance with the principles enshrined in Articles 14. This case held that deaf and mute people should also be given transportation allowances on par with blind and orthopedically handicapped employees of the government.

Union of India v National Federation of the Blind[2]
This was an appeal from the decision of the Delhi High Court wherein a public interest petition had been filed which sought the implementation of Section 33 of the Act alleging that the appellants herein have failed to provide reservation to the blind and low vision persons and they are virtually excluded from the process of recruitment to the Government posts as stipulated under the said Act.

The court looked into the calculation of the 3% reservation –whether it refers to cadre strength, or number of vacancies. It was held that 3% refers to a part of the total vacancies in cadre strength. The court also observed, “It is clear that while section 33 provides for a minimum level of representation of 3 per cent in the establishments of appropriate government, the legislature intended to ensure 5 per cent of representation in the entire workforce both in public as well as private sector”.

Government of India v Ravi Prakash Gupta[3]
In this case, the respondent was a visually challenged person who appeared for the civil services examination conducted by the Union Public Service Commission and was declared successful. However, he was not given an appointment even though he was at Sl. No. 5 in the merit list of visually impaired candidates. The respondent approached the Central Administrative Tribunal which refused his application and thereafter the respondent approached the high court. The high court directed the government to accommodate the Respondent in the merit list, against which the state filed an appeal in the Supreme Court. The state contended that since the post for which the respondent was applying was not identified for persons with disabilities and therefore not reserved for them, the government could not make reservations in the same.

The Supreme Court refused the state government’s contention that identification of jobs was a pre-requisite for reservation and appointment under section 33 of the Act.[4] The court held,

"It is only logical that, as provided in section 32 of the aforesaid Act, posts have to be identified for reservation for the purposes of Section 33, but such identification was meant to be simultaneously undertaken with the coming into operation of the Act, to give effect to the provisions of Section 33. The legislature never intended the provisions of section 32 of the Act to be used as a tool to deny the benefits of Section 33 to these categories of disabled persons indicated therein. Such a submission strikes at the foundation of the provisions relating to the duty cast upon the appropriate government to make appointments in every establishment."[5]

Syed Bashir-ud-Din Qadri v. Nazir Ahmed Shah[6]
This was a decision by the Supreme Court. In this case, the Appellant was a B.Sc. graduate with cerebral palsy who had applied for a job as a ‘Rehbar-e-Taleem’ or ‘Teaching Guide’ in the State of Jammu and Kashmir. The state government had initially objected to his appointment on the ground of his disability. The appellant however, with directions from the high court, was appointed under the Jammu and Kashmir Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1998.

The Respondent then filed a petition challenging the order of appointment and the appellant was re-examined by the head of the Department of Neurology. It was indicated in the report that as he had cerebral palsy, he had significant speech and writing difficulties, which would make it difficult for him to perform his duties as a teacher. The high court quashed his appointment and ordered that since the appellant was unfit to the post of the teacher he should be given an alternative employment. His appeal to the division bench of the high court was dismissed and he thereafter approached the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court observed that,

“This case involves a beneficial piece of social legislation to enable persons with certain forms of disability to live a life of purpose and human dignity. This is a case which has to be handled with sensitivity and not with bureaucratic apathy, as appears to have been done as far as the appellant is concerned... It is only to be expected that the movement of a person suffering from cerebral palsy would be jerky on account of locomotor disability and that his speech would be somewhat impaired but despite the same, the legislature thought it fit to provide for reservation of 1 per cent of the vacancies for such persons. So long as the same did not impede the person from discharging his duties efficiently and without causing prejudice to the children being taught, there could, therefore, be no reason for a rigid approach to be taken not to continue with the appellant's services as Rehbar-e-Taleem, particularly, when his students had themselves stated that they had got used to his manner of talking and did not have any difficulty in understanding the subject being taught by him... Coupled with the above is the fact that the results achieved by him in the different classes were extremely good; his appearance and demeanour in school had been highly appreciated by the committee which had been constituted pursuant to the orders of the high court to assess the appellant's ability in conducting his classes.”[7]

The court directed that in order to overcome the impediment of writing on the black board, an electronic external aid could be provided to the appellant, which could eliminate the need for drawing a diagram and the same could be substituted by a picture on a screen, which could be projected with minimum effort. With these directions for providing reasonable accommodation, the Supreme Court held that the disengagement of the appellant goes against the grain of the PWD Act and hence the order was set aside by the court.

Suchita Srivastava v. Chandigarh Administration[8]
This case was with regard to the reproductive rights of a woman with mental retardation residing at a government run welfare institution in Chandigarh who became pregnant due to a rape by an in-house staff and who wanted to keep the baby and carry on the pregnancy to full term. The Chandigarh Administration filed a petition in the high court seeking permission to terminate her pregnancy under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971 (“MTP Act”) on the ground that she was not capable of carrying on with the pregnancy and would not be able to look after a child. Although the expert body found that the woman had expressed her wish to bear her child, the high court directed the termination of the pregnancy. The woman, through an amicus, appealed to the Supreme Court and one of the main issues before the Supreme Court was regarding the legal capacity of a woman with mental retardation to decide on her pregnancy.

The Supreme Court noted the provisions of the MTP Act, which provided that where pregnancy is a result of rape and termination of the same is contemplated, the consent of the pregnant woman is mandatory.[9] The court also noted the exception to this provision which provided that in case of a pregnant woman who is “mentally ill”, pregnancy can be terminated with the approval of the woman’s guardian.[10] Following this, the court proceeded to make a distinction between ‘mental illness’ and ‘mental retardation’. Upholding the legal capacity of the appellant, the court held:

“While a guardian can make decisions on behalf a ‘mentally ill person’ as per Section 3(4)(a) of the MTP Act, the same cannot be done on behalf of a person who is in a condition of ‘mental retardation’. The only reasonable conclusion that can be arrived at in this regard is that the State must respect the personal autonomy of a mentally retarded woman with regard to decisions about terminating a pregnancy. It can also be reasoned that while the explicit consent of the woman in question is not a necessary condition for continuing the pregnancy, the MTP Act clearly lays down that obtaining the consent of the pregnant woman is indeed an essential condition for proceeding with the termination of a pregnancy... We cannot permit a dilution of this requirement of consent since the same would amount to an arbitrary and unreasonable restriction on the reproductive rights of the victim.”[11]

Thus the Supreme Court clearly held that the MTP Act required the consent of a mentally retarded woman for termination of pregnancy. Following this, the Court concluded that the Appellant was mentally retarded, had not consented to the termination of her pregnancy and in fact, had expressed her willingness to bear the child. Therefore it could not permit the termination of her pregnancy. In arriving at this conclusion, the Court not only recognised the reproductive rights of a woman under the MTP Act, but also recognised international norms and principles on mentally retarded persons and persons with disabilities under the CRPD. In this context the Court specifically held:

"Our conclusions in this case are strengthened by some norms developed in the realm of international law... In respecting the personal autonomy of mentally retarded persons with regard to the reproductive choice of continuing or terminating a pregnancy, the MTP Act lays down such a procedure. We must also bear in mind that India has ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) on October 1, 2007 and the contents of the same are binding on our legal system."[12]

The court clearly recognised the right to legal capacity of women with mental retardation to take independent decisions on her pregnancy. The Supreme Court held that “Her reproductive choice should be respected in spite of other factors such as the lack of understanding of the sexual act as well as apprehensions about her capacity to carry the pregnancy to its full term and the assumption of maternal responsibilities thereafter.[13]” Therefore, the Supreme Court laid out the specific right to legal capacity which was not subject to an understanding of one’s situation and capacities. This case clearly follows the spirit of protection of legal capacity under Article 12 of the CRPD.

High Court Decisions

Ranjit Kumar Rajak v. State Bank of India(2009) 5 Bom CR 227
The Petitioner in this case underwent a renal transplant in 2004. Subsequently, he applied to the post of a probationary officer in the State Bank of India. After a medical test, the bank rejected him on the ground that he was found medically unfit for the post. The petitioner approached the Bombay High Court by a writ petition claiming that despite medical reports that indicate his fitness to perform his duties, he was denied being considered for employment. The bank rejected him as the rules required the bank to reimburse medical expenses incurred by the officers of the bank and since the medical condition of the Petitioner required regular medical check-ups, the costs would be very high and could not be borne by the bank. The main question, according to the Court, was “whether a person who is fully qualified for a post because of his past or present medical condition which otherwise did not interfere with his fitness to dispense the duties of his post, be denied employment because of the financial burden that would be cast on the employer.”[14]

In an extremely significant ruling, a Division Bench of the Bombay High Court[15] articulated and recognised for the first time the concept of “reasonable accommodation at the workplace” in India. The court relied on the CRPD to decide the duty of the employer in providing reasonable accommodation and the limits on such a duty. The court recognised that India had signed and ratified the CRPD and that Article 27 of the Convention recognises the right of persons with disability to be "accepted in the labour market and work environment that is open, inclusive and accessible to persons with disabilities."[16]

The court also discussed the definition of “reasonable accommodation” under Article 2 as “a necessary and appropriate modification and adjustments not imposing a disproportionate or undue burden, where needed in a particular case, to ensure to persons with disabilities the enjoyment or exercise on an equal basis with others of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.”[17]

In interpreting “reasonable accommodation” and “undue burden” the court relied on the CRPD and recognised the importance of India’s international obligations with respect to rights of disabled persons by stating that:

“The law is now well settled that though the United Nations Convention may not have been enacted into the Municipal Law, as long as the convention is not in conflict with the Municipal Law and can be read into Article 2 thus making it enforceable. Therefore, in the absence of any conflict it is possible to read the test of reasonable accommodation in employment contracts.”[18]

The Court further held:

“A duty is, therefore, cast on the State to provide reasonable accommodation in the matter of employment subject to the burden of hardship test being satisfied. In the absence of a statutory definition of reasonable accommodation, the reasonable accommodation as set out in the protocol in the first instance can be considered. It will have to have a nexus with the financial burden on the institution and/or undertaking which will have to bear the burden and further the extent to which reasonable accommodation can be provided for.”[19]

The court incorporated the right to reasonable accommodation by declaring that “Reasonable accommodation, if read into Article 21, based on the U.N Protocol, would not be in conflict with municipal law. It would give added life and dimension to the ever expanding concept of life and its true enjoyment.”[20] Following this, the court concluded that the bank has a duty to provide reasonable accommodation to the petitioner subject to any undue burden. The court observed that no evidence was presented on how the financial burden would actually be a caused to the bank in providing reasonable accommodation to the petitioner even if it meant meeting his medical expenses. Consequently, the court allowed the petition and directed that the Petitioner be offered appointment and allowed to join the post.

Lalit and Others v Govt. of NCT and Another[21]
This petition was filed by 12 inmates of the hostel attached to Andh Mahavidyalya, New Delhi, an institution for visually impaired students, seeking a direction that they may not be expelled or dispossessed from the hostel. Out of these 12 inmates, expulsion orders were issued by the Respondents against 5 inmates on the ground that the hostel was meant for only students up to Class VIII and the petitioners had overstayed beyond this class. Many of them were between 25-35 years old and it was alleged that there was a shortage of space for deserving younger visually impaired students and that they were also intimidating the younger students. One of the main issues before the Court was whether the hostel was obligated to accommodate the petitioners because of their disabled status even if it resulted in a disadvantage to the other disabled students.

Justice Muralidhar of the Delhi High Court noted that the facts illustrated the lack of decent accommodation for children with disabilities and recognised the associated problems of lack of resources, hygiene and accountability in the running of institutions with disabled children. The court held as follows:

“In the context of the inviolable human rights of the disabled, it is necessary to take note of the binding and mandatory provisions of the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995 (specifically Sections 26 and 30) (`PDR Act’) and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (`CRPD’) which has been ratified by India. In particular, Article 7 which set out the obligations of the States towards children with disabilities, Article 9 which obliges the States to take appropriate measures to ensure access to “schools, housing, medical facilities’, and Article 24 which deals with the right to education are relevant.”

The court relied upon Article 24 of the CRPD which guaranteed the right to education and held that in the context of a disabled child housed in a state-run institution there are a cluster of laws all of which can be traced to the fundamental rights to liberty and a life with dignity. It held that in the context of a young person receiving education in a state-run institution as a resident scholar, the right to shelter and decent living is an inalienable facet of the right to education itself and when the State takes over the running of an educational institution that caters to the needs of the disabled, it has to account for the ‘cascading effect’ of multiple disadvantages that such children face.

In the context of the present case however, the court held that due to the limitation of resources, all the visually impaired persons at the Andh Mahavidhyalala, irrespective of their age cannot possibly expect to be allowed to live there as the primary purpose should be to cater to the needs of young children studying up to class VIII. If this primary object was not kept in view, then it may result in an unfair denial of the right to education of other deserving young students who are visually challenged.

The court thus directed the Respondent authorities to take every possible effort to see if all the 5 inmates who were given expulsion orders could be accommodated in any of the other institutions in Delhi. Sufficient time of 6 months should be given to them to make alternative arrangements and assistance should be given to help them find alternative accommodation. The court also observed that this case should act as a wakeup call for the government to monitor the functioning generally of all institutions under its control, particularly for the disabled. This case illustrates the incorporation of the CRPD principles with regard to reasonable accommodation and right to education of children. The court was called upon to balance the two rights, which it ultimately did by taking into account the level of disabilities faced by each group demanding accommodation.

The National Association for the Deaf v. Union of India [22]
This was a public interest petition filed by the National Association for the Deaf before the Delhi High Court on the non-availability of sign language interpreters in public services. The petition complained of the lack of availability of adequate number of sign language interpreters in various public places and sought for directions against the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment and other authorities to ensure access and better training of sign language interpreters.

While the court noted the lack of availability of sign language interpreters, it agreed with the Petitioner Association that due to non-availability of interpreters, the hearing impaired were unable to avail medical, transport and banking facilities and to also seek police help. With regard to the importance of ensuring the availability of support in the form of interpreters, the Court relied on the CRPD and held,

“The United Nations Convention on the Rights of persons with disabilities adopted by the General Assembly and ratified by the Govt. of India on 1st October, 2007 also provides for taking appropriate measures to provide forms of live assistance and intermediaries including guides, readers and professional Sign Language Interpreters to facilitate accessibility to buildings and other facilities open to the public. Needless to state that all the said rights are composite part of life enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution of India.”[23]

Based on this, the court issued specific directions to the respondent authorities which included undertaking a survey to assess the availability and requirements for sign language interpreters, appointing nodal officers to seek information from concerned authorities and prepare a report to be used for creation of new posts, creating courses and curricula for training of interpreters.

BhagwanDass and Anr v. Punjab State Electricity Board
In this case, the Appellant was an Assistant Lineman in the Respondent Board. During his service, he became totally blind and the Respondent failed to accommodate him in an alternative post as per Section 47 of the PWD Act and terminated his service. Therefore the appellant approached the High Court of Punjab and Haryana against the termination of his service. The high court dismissed the petition and the Appellant appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court allowed the appeal relying on Section 47 of the PWD Act and observed that the Board had an obligation to follow this provision as the appellant had acquired disability during his service. On Section 47, the Court relied on a previous decision in Kunal Singh v. Union of India and Anr[24] which held that, “In construing a provision of a social beneficial enactment that too dealing with disabled persons intended to give them equal opportunities, protection of rights and full participation, the view that advances the object of the Act and serves its purpose must be preferred to the one which obstructs the object and paralyses the purpose of the Act”[25]

The court gave a broad interpretation to Section 47 and took a protective approach towards persons with disabilities by holding:

“From the narrow point of view the officers were duty bound to follow the law and it was not open to them to allow their bias to defeat the lawful rights of the disabled employee. From the larger point of view the officers failed to realise that the disabled too are equal citizens of the country and have as much share in its resources as any other citizen. The denial of their rights would not only be unjust and unfair to them and their families but would create larger and graver problems for the society at large. What the law permits to them is no charity or largess but their right as equal citizens of the country.”

Ritesh Sinha v. State of Haryana[26]
In this case, an important interim order was passed by the High Court of Punjab and Haryana and the matter is still pending. The petitioner was a person with locomotor disability and was appointed as a clerk by the District and Sessions Judge, Karnal in the post reserved for physically disabled persons. Thereafter his services were terminated due to his inability to perform the duties as a clerk who was expected to write the office notes and maintain records in his own hands.

The court held that as the petitioner was well conversant with computer operations and that there could be plenty of work done by him like preparation of daily cause lists of all courts, certified copies of judgments, etc., which could be assigned to a computer savvy person like him. The court directed that in the interim, his dismissal order would remain stayed, and the respondents were directed to reinstate the petitioner in service with all benefits. The court even directed the respondents to immediately construct a ramp / slope so that the petitioner could enter his office and a compliance report to be submitted to court about the same. Further, it directed the respondents to see that a congenial atmosphere is created at the workplace so that the Petitioner is made an integral part of the mainstream workforce.

U.P. Vishesh Shikshak Association v. State of U.P.[27]
Here the Petitioner Association had filed a public interest petition before the Allahabad High Court contending that the pupil-teacher ratio so far as specialised teachers and children with disabilities was concerned was not adequate and claimed that the government circular on Integrated Education for Disabled Children Scheme mandated a pupil teacher ratio of 8:1. It also claimed that the Rehabilitation Council of India Act, 1992 imposed a statutory duty on the State to make arrangements for adequate number of teachers for persons with disabilities.

The Allahabad High Court recognised the statutory duty of the State to “provide all necessary help and assistance to physically disabled students.”[28] However, in response to an argument that orthopaedically handicapped children do not require specialised teachers, it held, “We are of the view that now, the right to education and right to livelihood being the fundamental rights enshrined under Articles 21 and 21-A of the Constitution, the State Government has to make all efforts to provide necessary assistance to all disabled persons. Taking into consideration the meagre strength of 1291 teachers, we cannot presume that State Government may be able to impart education to disabled students.”

Manjunatha v. Government of Karnataka and Ors[29]
In this case, the petitioner, who was completely blind sought to apply for the B. Ed. Course under the government quota of seats in Karnataka. However, he was denied admission by reason of the condition that persons with disability greater than 75 per cent would not be eligible for admission. The announcement issued by the respondent permitted applications from persons with disability but restricted it to such applicants who had a disability exceeding 40 per cent but below 75 per cent.

The Karnataka High Court allowed the petition by holding that such a provision in the announcement ran counter to the PWD Act. The respondent government argued that the upper limit in the announcement was based on a similar provision in Karnataka Selection of Candidates for Admission to Teachers Certificate Higher Course (TCH) and Bachelor of Education Course (B.Ed.) Rules 1999 and therefore such a notification could not be challenged. The bench however, rejected this contention and held that even the Rules run contrary to the PWD Act and the state government could not rely on the Rules to deny admission to candidates having more than 75 per cent disability. The court ruled in favour of the petitioner and held that he was entitled to take up CET for admission to B.Ed. course and further declared that he shall not be denied admission on the basis of his disability exceeding 75 per cent.

The observations of the court strengthened the protection for persons with disabilities as it effectively held that the disability legislations would take precedence over administrative rules of the government.

KritikaPurohit and Anr. v. State of Maharashtra and Ors.[30]
The petitioner was a visually impaired student who sought admission to the course in Bachelor of Physiotherapy but was not permitted to apply for the same. The petitioner contended that although the post of a physiotherapist was considered to be suitable for blind persons, the denial of courses in physiotherapy for blind persons ran counter to Section 39 of the PWD Act and that the respondents were obliged to make all accommodations for the Petitioner in conformity with Article 24(2) of the CRPD.

The respondents contended that it was not practical for the petitioner to be involved in the course. However, the court also noted the petitioner’s reliance on the circular of the Mumbai University in mandating that resources should be made available to visually impaired student to allow them to complete their courses. In view of these materials, the court observed that the respondents had shown a negative attitude towards persons with disabilities and “have not cared to consider the object underlying the provisions of Disabilities Act, 1995”. Therefore, by an interim order dated 2 August 2010, it directed the Commissioner of Disabilities to consider all the materials and make suitable instructions to the respondents for making necessary arrangements for admission of visually challenged students. It also directed that the petitioner should be provisionally admitted for the course and should be provided with resources for translation of the material to braille.

Subsequently the court found that the petitioner had completed the first exam and had secured 62 per cent in the same. Therefore, it held that she should be allowed to be admitted and complete the course. However, the court noted that the state government had accepted the guidelines of the Maharashtra State Council for Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy that visually impaired candidates are not fit for the physiotherapy course. On this, it noted the contentions of the Petitioner and also Xavier’s Resource Centre for the Visually Challenged who claimed that a physiotherapist is not required to perform all the functions of physiotherapy and visually impaired physiotherapists can perform all functions with assistance if necessary. They also pointed out various physiotherapists who were working in Maharasthra successfully for many years. The court held that “We are, therefore, of the view that the stand of the respondent authorities is clearly discriminatory and adversely affects the Right to Life and equal opportunities of the petitioner as also other such students similarly situated. The fact that petitioner though being visually impaired not only passed her first year examination with 62% marks and is successfully studying in 2nd year, and several visually impaired persons have been working as professional physiotherapists in India as well as abroad appeals to us not to allow the petitioner as also others in the same position to be discriminated against or disqualified on that ground.[31]”

Thus, the court stayed the decision of the state government and directed the respondents to consider candidates with visual disability for admission to the course in physiotherapy.

[1]. Civil Petition 107 of 2011, decided on December 12, 2013.

[2]. (2013)2 SCC 772.

[3]. (2010) 7 SCC 626.

[4]. The Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995, section 33, available at http://www.socialjustice.nic.in/pwdact1995.php?format=print

[5]. Id at Para 16.

[6]. SLP(C)Nos.10669-70 of 2008 decided on 10 March 2010.

[7]. SLP(C)Nos.10669-70 of 2008 ¶28.

[8]. 2009 (9) SCC 1.

[9]. See Section 3(4)(b), Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971.

[10]. See Section 3(4)(a), Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971.

[11].Suchita Shrivastavav Chandigarh Administration, (2009) 9 SCC 1, at para 15.

[12]. See Id at Para 25, 26.

[13]. See SuchitaShrivastava (n 5) at Para 10.

[14]. Ranjit Kumar Rajak v. State Bank of India 2009 (5) BomCR 227 at Para 1.

[15]. With Justice Re

[16]. See Article 27(1), CRPD (n 1).

[17]. Reasonable accommodation is recognised under Article 2 of the CRPD and is defined as follows: ‘“Reasonable accommodation” means necessary and appropriate modification and adjustments not imposing a disproportionate or undue burden, where needed in a particular case, to ensure to persons with disabilities the enjoyment or exercise on an equal basis with others of all human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

[18]. Ranjit Kumar Rajak (n 9) at Para 17.

[19]. Id at Para 19.

[20]. Id at Para 21.

[21]. W.P. (C) No. 3444/2008, Judgment dated 7.5.2010 (Delhi High Court).

[22]. W.P.(C) No.6250/2010, Judgment dated 24.11.2011 (Delhi High Court).

[23]. The National Association of the Deaf v Union of India(n 20) at Para 7.

[24]. (2003) 4 SCC 524.

[25]. Id at Para 9.

[26].CWP NO. 3087 OF 2011 (Punjab and Haryana High Court).

[27]. Misc Bench No. 5622/ 2010, order dated 17 June 2010 (Allahabad High Court).

[28]. Id at Para 12.

[29]. W.P. 35969/2010, judgment dated 29-09-2011 (Karnataka High Court).

[30]. W.P. 979/2010, Bombay High Court.

[31]. KritikaPurohit and Anr. v. State of Maharashtra and Ors., W.P. 979/2010, Bombay High Court, order dated 17 November 2011, para 7.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/accessibility/blog/summary-of-judgments-on-disability-rights

Summary of CIS Comments to DIPP’s Discussion Paper on SEPs and their availability on FRAND terms

sinha — 2016-04-26T12:07:30Z

This blog post summarises CIS’ responses to DIPP’s Discussion Paper on SEPs and their availability on FRAND terms. The response made specific recommendations regarding adequacy of Indian law to determine SEP litigation, remedies for FRAND assured SEPs, FRAND royalty rates, SSO’s policies, parties’ non-disclosure agreements and transparency, and essentiality of SEPs and their declassification.

On April 22nd, 2016, CIS filed a comment with the Department for Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), regarding Standard Essential Patents(SEPs) in India and their availability on FRAND terms. A TL;DR version of the comment follows.

Whether IPR and antitrust legislations should be amended

CIS submitted that no amendments to either the Patents Act, 1970 or the Competition Act, 2005 may be preferred. The changes that need to be brought forth are the adoption of a balanced National IPR Policy, and a National Competition Policy - both of which have been in the works for a while. Further, we urge the government to not enter into FTAs like the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.

IPR Policies of SSOs, and prescribing Guidelines for their functioning

CIS recommended that, first, Indian SSOs adopt an IPR Policy factoring in “India specific requirements”; second, on TSDSI’s IPR Policy (and DOSTI, GIFSI), certain changes be made to the policy to a) require the members to refrain from seeking injunctive relief b) delete the condition where FRAND negotiations may be subject to a condition of reciprocity; (c) to identify in detail the procedure to be followed in case of patent ‘holdups’ and patent ‘holdouts’; (d) to identify in detail the procedure to be followed in case of refusal to license by TSDSI members, and, nonmembers, both; and, (e) to include a detailed process on the declassification of a standard or technical specification. Further, SSOs may consider recommending the use of royalty-free licenses, in tune with the W3C and Open Mobile Alliance.

The government should prescribe Model Guidelines that may be adopted by Indian SSOs (incorporating the suggestions above), in view of increasing complexity of SEP litigation, and potential abuse of FRAND process. The Model Guidelines may additionally cover (a) the composition of the SSO; (b) the process of admitting members; (c) the process of the determination of a standard or technical specification; (d) the process of declassification of a standard or technical specification; (e) the IPR Policy; (f) resolution of disputes; (g) applicable law.

Royalty Rates

The government should also intervene in the setting of royalties and FRAND terms, in light of severe inadequacies in the SSOs’ IPR policies. CIS suggested that the government should initiate the formation of a patent pool of critical mobile technologies and apply a compulsory license with a five per cent royalty. Also, payment of royalties on SEPs should be capped by fixing a limit by the DIPP.

Further, royalty rates for SEPs should be based on the smallest saleable patent practising component.

Non-Disclosure Agreements and Transparency

On the use of Non-Disclosure Agreements in SEP/FRAND litigation, CIS submitted that . pending a final determination by the CCI (and subsequent appeals) it would be premature to make an absolute claim on whether the use of NDAs results in an abuse of dominant position in all instances.

On making the practices of cross-licensing and patent pooling transparent, CIS strongly urged the DIPP to strictly enforce the compliance of Form 27s by patentees. Availability of Form 27s will critically enable willing licensees to access patent working information in a timely manner. The Form 27 template may be modified to include more details, including patent pool licenses, with an explicit declaration of the names of the licensees and not just the number.

Further, guidelines may be drawn up on whether it was discriminatory to charge no royalties (whether on the SSPPU or on the whole device) for a patent holder in a cross licensing arrangement with another, when it charges royalty on the selling price of the device from a non cross-licensor.

Remedies for FRAND- assured SEPs

CIS recommended that courts adopt a more cautious stance towards granting injunctions in the field of SEP litigation, because a) injunctions may deter willing licensees from agreeing to the FRAND commitment, and also harm them b) accurately proving irreparable damage is difficult to establish in the Indian context for smartphone manufacturers c) there exists ambiguity in Indian jurisprudence to determine the conduct of an unwilling licensee, inter alia.

In CIS’ opinion, there is no need for an independent expert body to determine FRAND terms for SEPs and devising the methodology for such a purpose. The existing legal and regulatory framework is reasonably equipped to determine FRAND terms. Analytical frameworks may be studied in American jurisprudence to determine reasonable royalty rates, and patent damages.

Essentiality of SEPs and their declassification

To determine whether a patent declared as SEP is actually an Essential Patent, CIS submits that various methodologies have been used by studies to analyse the same. Goodman and Myers led a study on the subject in 2005; and additionally, laboratory tests and expert opinions can be taken into account to determine the essentiality.

Lastly, CIS suggested that Indian SSOs maintain a publicly accessible database of SEPs found to be invalid or non-essential in India. Such a record will assist the process of declassifying SEPs timely.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/summary-of-cis-comments-to-dipp2019s-discussion-paper-on-seps-and-their-availability-on-frand-terms

Sumandro Chattapadhyay

praskrishna — 2015-01-15T01:41:40Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/sumandro-chattapadhyay.pdf

Sumandro C - Open Access Dialogues - Strategic Issues Emerging from the Comments of Indian Participants

sumandro — 2015-10-11T04:34:19Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/sumandro-c-open-access-dialogues-2013

Suckfly Attacks National Stock Exchange Tech Vendor, Among Others

praskrishna — 2016-05-29T08:07:00Z

A cyber espionage group attacked an Indian IT firm that provides support to India’s largest stock exchange. It’s one of many attacks in the recent past.

The blog post by Rohit Pathak was published in the Quint on May 21, 2016. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

For 24 months now, several Indian government and private organisations have been victims of highly-targeted and sustained cyberattacks by Suckfly. Cyber security firm Symantec has been tracking Suckfly since April 2014 and believes it is a Chinese cyber-espionage group. According to Symantec, Suckfly uses stolen digital certificates to breach the internal networks of Indian organisations.

While Symantec has declined to name any of the victims, it says the high-profile targets include one of India’s largest financial institutions, an e-commerce company and its primary shipping vendor, a leading Indian IT company, two government organisations, and an American health care provider’s Indian business unit.

So far, the highest infection rate has been at a government organisation responsible for implementing network software across various ministries and departments of the Indian central government. Symantec’s investigation report says Suckfly uses custom malware called Backdoor.Nidiran to orchestrate the attacks. While Suckfly had used the same backdoor in its previous campaigns in other countries, in India the post-infection activity was significantly higher.

“We should be aware that this attack isn’t yet over. Suckfly has been targeting organisations since at least May 2014, and it very likely continues to have access to governmental and corporate servers in India thanks to the Nidiran backdoor,” says Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director, Centre for Internet and Society.

He added that, “Depending on what access Suckfly got, the damage could be anything from them having conducted fraudulent financial transactions to obtaining classified governmental secrets.”

It is as yet unclear what data has been exfiltrated by Suckfly, but the fact that no organisations have reported this to their customers shows that the current laws with regard to data security and data breaches are inadequate.

Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director, Centre for Internet and Society

In a detailed email exchange with Bloomberg Quint, Symantec’s security experts describe how Suckfly operates, its motives, and what Indian entities can do to protect themselves.

Suckfly’s Modus Operandi

In 2015, between 22 April and 4 May, Suckfly conducted a multistage attack on an Indian e-commerce company.

It first identified a user – an employee of the e-commerce company – to attempt its initial breach into the e-commerce company’s internal network.

Symantec says, “We don’t have hard evidence of how Suckfly obtained information on the targeted user, but we did find a large open-source presence on the initial target. The target’s job function, corporate email address, information on work-related projects, and publicly accessible personal blog could all be freely found online.’

Suckfly then exploited a vulnerability in the employee’s operating system (Windows) that allowed it to bypass the User Account Control and install the malware. It’s likely that Suckfly used a spear-phishing email to gain entry.

Having entered the employee’s system, Suckfly gained access to the employee’s account credentials and then used them to access the victim’s account and navigate the e-commerce company’s internal corporate network as though it were the employee.

Suckfly’s final step was to exfiltrate data off the victim’s network and onto Suckfly’s infrastructure.

Weekends Off

The attack took place over 13 days, but Symantec discovered that Suckfly was active only Monday to Friday. There was no activity from the group on weekends. This could be because the attackers’ hacktools are command line driven and can provide insight into when operators are behind keyboards actively working.

Suckfly’s Motives?

According to Symantec, “Suckfly targeted one of India’s largest e-commerce companies, a major Indian shipping company, one of India’s largest financial organizations, and an IT firm that provides support for India’s largest stock exchange. All of these targets are large corporations that play a major role in India’s economy. By targeting all of these organisations together, Suckfly could have had a much larger impact on India and its economy. While we don’t know the motivations behind the attacks, the targeted commercial organisations, along with the targeted government organisations, may point in this direction. Symantec’s research shows that Suckfly is well-equipped to carry out targeted attacks for years while staying off the radar of security organisations.”

Symantec refused to name the victims and when contacted, the National Stock Exchange (NSE) said its systems were secure and that it had not heard of any such attack on any of its tech vendors.

In the last two years, from 2013 to 2015, the total number of reported cyber breaches worldwide have increased 25%. India is amongst the most vulnerable – ranking third on the list of countries that have faced financial intrusion.

Smokescreen is a cybersecurity firm and CEO Sahir Hidayatullah claims virtually every large company in India has been compromised to varying degrees already.

Strategic economic advantage and intellectual property theft are the primary motivators for nation state attackers targeting energy, pharma, and manufacturing. Attacks against the financial sector are more commonly done by financially-motivated cybercriminals, however, nation state attackers have an interest here as well – being deeply embedded into critical systems affords opportunities for both mass data collection as well as the ability to cripple financial systems if required. All major governments aspire to have this offensive capability and are in various stages of having developed it already.Sahir Hidayatullah, CEO, Smokescreen

Over the last few months, our decoy detection network in India has seen an up-tick in targeted attacks specifically aimed at companies in banking, energy, pharmaceuticals and manufacturing. Manufacturing has seen the single largest increase in targeted attempts to compromise infrastructure. We have seen a large increase in ‘malware-less’ attacks including the use of stolen credentials on VPN systems.

More worrisome is that over the last year, we have conducted breach-readiness assessments for many of the large names in these verticals, and in every instance, the internal controls were unable to detect and respond to our simulated attacks in time. According to our assessment, none of them are prepared to withstand a targeted attack.

According to a 2015 survey conducted by PWC spanning 250 Indian companies, 72% of the respondents claimed they faced some sort of cyberattack over the last year. 63% claimed intrusions lead to financial losses and 55% claimed there was loss of sensitive information. But the worrying number is this – 78% have no cyber incident response plan. That’s good news for Suckfly and its comrades.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-quint-rohit-pathak-may-21-2016-suckly-attacks-national-stock-exchange-tech-vendor-among-others

Submitted Comments on the Telangana State Open Data Policy 2016

sumandro — 2016-09-01T05:49:51Z

Last month, the Information Technology, Electronics & Communications Department of the Government of Telangana released the first public draft of the Telangana State Open Data Policy 2016, and sought comments from various stakeholders in the state and outside. The draft policy not only aims to facilitate and provide a framework for proactive disclosure of data created by the state government agencies, but also identify the need for integrating such a mandate within the information systems operated by these agencies as well. CIS is grateful to be invited to submit its detailed comments on the same. The submission was drafted by Anubha Sinha and Sumandro Chattapadhyay.

Download the submitted document: PDF.

1. Preliminary

1.1. This submission presents comments and recommendations by the Centre for Internet and Society (“CIS”) [1] on the proposed draft of the Telangana Open Data Policy 2016 (“the draft policy”). This submission is based on Version 1 of the draft policy shared by the Information Technology, Electronics & Communications Department, Government of Telangana (“the ITE&C Department”).

1.2. CIS commends the ITE&C Department for its generous efforts at seeking inputs from various stakeholders to draft an open data policy for the state of Telangana. CIS is thankful for this opportunity to provide a clause-by-clause submission.

2. The Centre for Internet and Society

2.1. 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, 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 reconfiguration of social processes and structures through the internet and digital media technologies, and vice versa.

2.2. This submission is consistent with CIS’ commitment to safeguarding general public interest, and the interests and rights of various stakeholders involved. The comments in this submission aim to further the principle of citizens’ right to information, instituting openness-by-default in governmental activities, and to realise the various kinds of public goods that can emerge from greater availability of open (government) data. The submission is limited to those clauses that most directly have an impact on these principles.

3. Comments and Recommendations

This section presents comments and recommendations directed at the draft policy as a whole, and in certain places, directed at specific clauses of the draft policy.

3.1. Defining the Scope of the Policy in the Preamble

3.1.1. CIS observes and appreciates that the ITE&C Department has identified the open data policy as a catalyst for, and as dependent upon, a larger transformation of the information systems implemented in the state, to specifically ensure that these information systems.

3.1.2. CIS commends the endeavour of the draft policy to share data in open and machine-readable standards. To further this, it will be useful for the preamble to explicitly mandate proactive disclosure in both human-readable and machine-readable formats, using open standards, and under open license(s).

3.1.3. CIS recommends that the draft policy state the scope of the policy at the outset, i.e. in the Preamble section of the document. This will provide greater clarity to the stakeholders who are trying to ascertain applicability of the draft policy to their data.

3.1.4. CIS commends the crucial mandate of creating data inventory within every state government ministry / department. We further recommend that the draft policy also expressly states the need to make these inventories publicly accessible.

3.1.5. CIS commends the draft policy’s aim to build a process to engage with data users for better outcomes. We suggest that the draft policy also enumerates the “outcomes” of such engagement, in order to provide more clarity. We recommend that these “outcomes” include greater public supply of open government data in an effective, well-documented, timely, and responsible manner.

3.1.6. Further, CIS suggests that the draft policy define “information centric and customer centric data” to provide more clarity to the document, as well as its scope and objectives.

3.2. Provide Legal and Policy References

3.2.1. Strengthening transparency, predictability, and legal certainty of rules benefits all stakeholders. Thus, as far as possible, terms in the draft policy should use pre-existing legal definitions. In case of ambiguities arising after the implementation of the policy, consistency in definitions will also lead to greater interpretive certainty. It must be noted that good quality public policies which promote legal certainty, lead to better implementation.

3.2.2. CIS observes that the draft policy re-defines various terms in Section 4 that have already been defined in National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy (“NDSAP”) 2012 [2], the Right to Information 2005 (“RTI Act”) [3], and IT (Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information) Rules 2011 [4]. We strongly recommend that the draft policy uses the pre-existing definitions in these acts, rules, and policies.

3.2.3. Further, CIS observes that while certain sections accurately reflect definitions and parts from other acts, rules and policies, such sections are not referenced back to the latter. These sections include, but are not limited to: Sections 3, 7, 8, 4 (definitions of Data set, Data Archive, Negative list, Sensitive Personal data). We strongly recommend that accurate legal references be added to the draft policy after careful study of the language used.

3.3. Need for More Focused Objective Statement

3.3.1. While the draft policy has a very comprehensive statement of its objectives, including "all issues related to data in terms of the available scope of sharing and accessing spatial and non-spatial data under broad frameworks of standards and interoperability," it may consider offering a more focused statement of its key objective, which is to provide a policy framework for proactive disclosure of government data by the various agencies of the Government of Telangana.

3.3.2. Further, the objective statement must clearly state that the policy enables publication of data created by the agencies of the Government of Telangana, and/or by private agencies working in partnership with public agencies, using public funds as open data (that is, using open standards, and under open license). The present version of the objective statement mentions "sharing" and "accessing" the data concerned under "broad frameworks of standards and interoperability" but does not make it clear if such shared data will be available in open standards, under open licenses, and for royalty-free adaptation and redistribution by the users concerned.

3.4. Suggestions related to the Definitions

3.4.1. The term “Data” has not been defined in accordance with NDSAP 2012. We suggest that the definition provided in NDSAP is followed so as to ensure legal compatibility.

3.4.2. The term “Sensitive Personal Data” seems to have been defined on the basis of the definition provided in the IT (Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information) Rules 2011. Please add direct reference so as to make this clear. We further suggest that the term “Personal Information”, also defined in the same IT Rules, is also included and referred to in the draft policy, so that not only Sensitive Personal Data is barred from disclosure under this policy, but also Personal Information (that is "any information that relates to a natural person, which, either directly or indirectly, in combination with other information available or likely to be available with a body corporate, is capable of identifying such person") [5].

3.4.3. The term “Negative List” is defined in a manner that allows the state government ministries and agencies to identify which data are to be considered as non-shareable without any reference to an existing policy framework that list acceptable grounds for such identification. The term must be defined more restrictively, as this definition can allow an agency to avoid disclosure of data that may not be legally justifiable as non-shareable or sensitive. Thus, we recommend a more limited definition which may draw upon the RTI Act 2005, and specifically consider the factors mentioned in Sections 8 and 9 of the Act as the (only) set of acceptable reasons for non-disclosure of government data.

3.4.4. The terms “Shareable Data” and “Sensitive Data” are used in several places in the draft policy but are not defined in Section 4. Both these terms are defined in NDSAP 2012. We suggest that both these terms be listed in Section 4, in accordance with the respective definitions provided in NDSAP 2012.

3.4.5. The terms “Data Archive”, “Data Acquisition”, “Raw Data”, “Standards-Compliant Applications”, and “Unique Data” are defined in Section 4, but none of these terms appear elsewhere in the draft policy. We suggest that these terms are either better integrated into the document, or may not be defined at all.

3.5. Rename Section 6 to Focus on Implementation of the Policy

3.5.1. Though the Section 6 is named as “Shareable Data”, it instead categorically lists down how the policy is to be implemented. This is a very welcome step, but the Section title should reflect this purpose of the Section.

3.5.2. The decision proposed in the draft policy to make it mandatory for "each funding organization" to "highlight data sharing policy as preamble in its RFPs as well as Project proposal formats" is much appreciated and commendable. For a clearer and wider applicability of this measure, we recommend that this responsibility should apply to all state government agencies, including agencies where the state government enjoys significant stake, and all public-private partnerships entered into by the state government agencies, and not only to "funding organizations" (a term that has also not been defined in the draft policy).

3.5.3. While the Section details out various measures and steps of implementation of the policy, it does not clarify which agency and/or committee would have the authority and responsibility to coordinate, monitor, facilitate, and ensure these measures and steps. Not only governmental representatives but also non-governmental representatives may be considered for such a committee.

3.6. Host All Open Government Data in the State Portal

3.6.1. We observe that the Section 6 indicates that , the designated domain for the open government data portal for the state of Telangana, will only store metadata related to the proactive disclosed data sets but not the data sets themselves. This is further clarified in Section 10. We strongly urge the ITE&C Department to reconsider this decision to not to store the actual open data sets in the state open government data portal itself but in the departmental portals. A central archive of the open data assets, hosted by the state open government data portal, will allow for more effective and streamlined management of the open data assets concerned, including their systematic backing-up, better security and integrity, permanent and unique disclosure, and rule-driven updation. This would also reduce the burden upon all the government agencies, especially those that do not have a substantial IT team, to run independent department-specific open data portals.

3.7. Reconsider the Section on Data Classification

3.7.1. While it is clear that the Section 7 on Data Classification follows the classification of various data sets created, managed, and/or hosted by government agencies offered in the NDSAP 2012, it is not very clear what role this classification plays in functioning and implementation of the draft policy. While Open Access and Registered Access data may both be considered as open government data that is to be proactively disclosed by the state government agencies via the state open government data portal, the Restricted Access data overlaps with the kinds of data already included in the Negative List defined in the draft policy (and elsewhere, like the RTI Act 2005). Further, the final sentence in this Section ensures that all data users provide appropriate attribution of the source(s) of the data set concerned, which (though is an important statement) should not be part of this Section on Data Classification. We suggest reconsideration of inclusion of this Section.

3.8. Reconsider the Section on Technology for Sharing and Access

3.8.1. While it is clear that the Section 8 on Technology for Sharing and Access is adapted from the Section 9 of the NDSAP 2012, the text in this Section seems to be not fully compatible with other statements in this draft policy. For example, the Section states that "[t]his integrated repository will hold data of current and historical nature and this repository over a period of time will also encompass data generated by various State Government departments." However, the draft policy states in Section 10 that "data.telangana.gov.in will only have the metadata and data itself will be accessed from the portals of the departments."

3.8.2. We strongly urge the ITE&C Department to revise this Section through close discussion with the NDSAP Project Management Unit, National Informatics Centre, which is the technical team responsible for developing and managing the portal, since the present version of this Section lists the original feature set of the portal as envisioned in 2012 but does not reflect the most recent feature set that has been already implemented in the portal concerned.

3.9. Current Legal Framework (Section 9) should List to Relevant Acts, Rules, Policies, and Guidelines

3.9.1. CIS observes that the draft policy attempts to lay out the applicable legal framework in Section 2 and 9 of the draft policy, and submits that the legal framework is incomplete and recommends that the draft policy lists all the following relevant acts, rules, policies and guidelines:

National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy, 2012
Right to Information Act, 2005
Information Technology Act, 2002
Information Technology (Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information) Rules, 2011.

3.9.2. CIS submits that apart from the policies mentioned above, the implementation of the draft policy is intricately linked to concepts of "open standards," "open source software," "open API," and "right to information." These concepts are governed by specific acts and policies, and are applicable to government owned data, as follows:

Adoption of Open Standards: CIS observes that the draft policy draws on the importance of building information systems for interoperability and greater information accessibility. Interoperability is achieved by appropriate implementation of open standards. Thus, CIS submits that the Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance [6] which establishes the guidelines for usage of open standards to ensure seamless interoperability, and the Implementation Guidelines of the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy, 2012 [7] should be mentioned in the draft policy.
Adoption of Open Source Software: The Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software for Government of India states that the "Government of India shall endeavour to adopt Open Source Software in all e-Governance systems implemented by various Government organizations, as a preferred option in comparison to Closed Source Software [8]." As the draft policy proposed to guide the development of information systems to share open data is being developed and implemented both by the Government of Telangana and by other agencies (academic, commercial, and otherwise), it must include an explicit reference and embracing of this mandate for adoption of Open Source Software, for reasons of reducing expenses, avoiding vendor lock-ins, re-usability of software components, enabling public accountability, and greater security of software systems.
Implementation of Open APIs: CIS observes that the draft policy refers to Standard compliant applications in Section 4. CIS suggests that final version of the policy refer to and operationalise the Policy on Open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for Government of India [9]. This will ensure that the openly available data is available to the public, as well as to all the government agencies, in a structured digital format that is easy to consume and use on one hand, and is available for various forms of value addition and innovation on the other. Refer to Official Secrets Act, 1923: The Official Secrets Act penalises a person if he/she "obtains, collects, records or publishes or communicates to other person any secret official code or password, or any sketch, plan, model, article or note or other document or information which is calculated to be or might be or is intended to be, directly or indirectly, useful to an enemy for which relates to a matter the disclosure of which is likely to affect the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the State or friendly relations with foreign States [10]." CIS submits that this Act should be referred to in this context of ensuring non-publication of the aforementioned data.

3.10. Mandate a Participatory Process for Developing the Implementation Guidelines

3.10.1. We highly appreciate and welcome the fact that the draft policy emphasises rapid operationalisation of the policy by mandating that the ITE&C Department will prepare a detailed implementation guideline within 6 months of the notification of this policy, and all state government departments will publish at least 5 high value datasets within the next three months. Just as an addition to this mandate, we would like to propose that it can be suggested that the ITE&C Department undertakes a participatory process, with contributions from both government agencies and non-government actors, to develop this implementation guideline document. We believe that opening up government data in an effective and sustainable manner, for most government agencies, involves a systematic change in how the agency undertakes day-to-day data management practices. Hence, to develop productive and practical implementation guidelines, the ITE&C Department needs to gather insights from the other state government agencies regarding their existing data (and metadata) management practices [11]. Further, participation of the non-government actors in this process is crucial to ensure that the implementation guidelines appropriately identify the high value data sets, that is data sets that should be published on a priority basis.

3.11. Defer the Decision about Roles of Data Owners, Generators, and Controllers

3.11.1. As the draft policy does not specifically define the terms “Data Owners”, “Data Generators”, and “Data Controllers”, and the Section 11 only briefly describes some of the roles of these types of actors, we suggest removal of this discussion and the decision regarding the specific roles and functions of the Data Owners / Generators / Controllers from the draft policy itself. It will be perhaps more appropriate and effective to define these terms, as well as their roles and functions, in the implementation guidelines to be prepared by the ITE&C Department after the notification of the open data policy, since these terms relate directly to the final designing of the implementation process.

3.12. CIS is grateful to the ITE&C Department for this opportunity to provide comments, and would be honoured to provide further assistance on the matter.

Endnotes

[1] See: http://cis-india.org/.

[2] See: http://data.gov.in/sites/default/files/NDSAP.pdf.

[3] See: http://rti.gov.in/webactrti.htm.

[4] See: http://meity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/GSR313E_10511(1).pdf.

[5] See Section 2 (1) (i) of IT (Reasonable security practices and procedures and sensitive personal data or information) Rules 2011.

[6] See: https://egovstandards.gov.in/sites/default/files/Published%20Documents/Policy_on_Open_Standards_for_e-Governance.pdf.

[7] See: https://data.gov.in/sites/default/files/NDSAP_Implementation_Guidelines_2.2.pdf.

[8] See: http://deity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/policy_on_adoption_of_oss.pdf.

[9] See: http://deity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/Open_APIs_19May2015.pdf.

[10] See: http://www.archive.india.gov.in/allimpfrms/allacts/3314.pdf, Sections 2 (2) and 3 (1) (c).

[11] A similar process was undertaken by the IT Department of the Government of Sikkim when developing the implementation guideline document. The ITE&C Department may consider discussing the matter with the said department to exchange relevant learnings.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/comments-on-the-telangana-state-open-data-policy-2016

Submitted Comments on the 'Government Open Data Use License - India'

sinha — 2016-07-26T09:23:48Z

The public consultation process of the draft open data license to be used by Government of India has ended yesterday. Here we share the text of the submission by CIS. It was drafted by Anubha Sinha, Pranesh Prakash, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay.

The following comments on the 'Government Open Data Use License - India' was drafted by Anubha Sinha, Pranesh Prakash, and Sumandro Chattapadhyay, and submitted through the MyGov portal on July 25, 2016. The original submission can be found here.

I. Preliminary

This submission presents comments by the Centre for Internet and Society (“CIS”) [1] on the draft Government Open Data Use License - India (“the draft licence”) [2] by the Department of Legal Affairs.
This submission is based on the draft licence released on the MyGov portal on June 27, 2016 [3].
CIS commends the Department of Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India for its efforts at seeking inputs from various stakeholders prior to finalising its open data licence. CIS is thankful for the opportunity to have been a part of the discussion during the framing of the licence; and to provide this submission, in furtherance of the feedback process continuing from the draft licence.

II. Overview

The Centre for Internet and Society is a non-governmental organisation engaged in research and policy work in the areas of, inter alia, access to knowledge and openness. This clause-by-clause submission is consistent with CIS’ commitment to safeguarding general public interest, and the interests and rights of various stakeholders involved. Accordingly, the comments in this submission aim to further these principles and are limited to those clauses that most directly have an impact on them.

III. Comments and Recommendations

Name of the Licence: CIS recommends naming the licence “Open Data Licence - India” to reflect the nomenclature already established for similar licences in other nations like the UK and Canada. More importantly, the inclusion of the word ‘use’ in the original name “Government Open Data Use License” is misleading, since the licence permits use, sharing, modification and redistribution of open data.
Change Language on Permissible Use of Data: The draft licence uses the terms “Access, use, adapt, and redistribute,” which are used in UNESCO’s definition of open educational resources, whereas, under the Indian Copyright Act [4], it should cover “reproduction, issuing of copies,” etc. To resolve this difference, we suggest the following language be used: “Subject to the provisions of section 7, all users are provided a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to all rights covered by copyright and allied rights, for the duration of existence of such copyright and allied rights over the data or information.”
Add Section on the Scope of Applicability of the Licence: It will be useful to inform the user of the licence on its applicability. The section may be drafted as: “This licence is meant for public use, and especially by all Ministries, Departments, Organizations, Agencies, and autonomous bodies of Government of India, when publicly disclosing, either proactively or reactively, data and information created, generated, collected, and managed using public funds provided by Government of India directly or through authorized agencies.”
Add Sub-Clause Specifying that the Licence is Agnostic of Mode of Access: As part of the section 4 of the draft licence, titled ‘Terms and Conditions of Use of Data,’ a sub-clause should be added that specifies that users may enjoy all the freedom granted under this licence irrespective of their preferred mode of access of the data concerned, say manually downloaded from the website, automatically accessed via an API, collected from a third party involved in re-sharing of this data, accessed in physical/printed form, etc.
Add Sub-Clause on Non-Repudiability and Integrity of the Published Data: To complement the sub-clause 6.e. that notes that data published under this licence should be published permanently and with appropriate versioning (in case of the published data being updated and/or modified), another sub-clause should be added that states that non-repudiability and integrity of published data must be ensured through application of real/digital signature, as applicable, and checksum, as applicable. This is to ensure that an user who has obtained the data, either in physical or digital form, can effectively identify and verify the the agency that has published the data, and if any parts of the data have been lost/modified in the process of distribution and/or transmission (through technological corruption of data, or otherwise).
Combine Section 6 on Exemptions and Section 7 on Termination: Given that the licence cannot reasonably proscribe access to data that has already been published online, it is suggested that it would be better to simply terminate the application of the licence to that data or information that ought not to have been published for grounds provided under section 8 of the RTI Act, or have been inadvertently published. It should also be noted that section 8 of the RTI Act cannot be “violated” (as stated in Section 6.g. of the draft licence), since it only provides permission for the public authority to withhold information, and does not impose an obligation on them (or anyone else) to do so. The combined clause can read: “Upon determination by the data provider that specific data or information should not have been publicly disclosed for the grounds provided under Section 8 of the Right to Information Act, 2005, the data provider may terminate the applicability of the licence for that data or information, and this termination will have the effect of revocation of all rights provided under Section 3 of this licence.”
It will be our pleasure to discuss these submissions with the Department of Legal Affairs in greater detail, supplement these with further submissions if necessary, and offer any other assistance towards the efforts at developing a national open data licence.

[1] See: http://cis-india.org/.

[2] See: https://www.mygov.in/sites/default/files/mygov_1466767582190667.pdf.

[3] See: https://www.mygov.in/group-issue/public-consultation-government-open-data-use-license-india/.

[4] See: http://www.copyright.gov.in/Documents/CopyrightRules1957.pdf.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/submitted-comments-on-the-government-open-data-use-license-india

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

Submission to UN High Level Panel on Digital Co-operation.pdf

karan — 2019-02-07T07:18:44Z

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

Submission to TRAI (November 6, 2017)

Admin — 2017-11-08T01:08:37Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/files/submission-to-trai-november-6-2017

Submission to the Facebook Oversight Board: Policy on Cross-checks

2022-02-09T05:31:32Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) submitted public comments to the Facebook Oversight Board on a policy consultation.

Whether a cross-check system is needed?

Recommendation for the Board: The Board should investigate the cross-check system as part of Meta’s larger problems with algorithmically amplified speech, and how such speech gets moderated.

Explanation: The issues surrounding Meta’s cross-check system are not an isolated phenomena, but rather a reflection of the problems of algorithmically amplified speech, as well the lack of transparency in the company’s content moderation processes at large. At the outset, it must be stated that the majority of information on the cross-check system only became available after the media reports published by the Wall Street Journal. While these reports have been extensive in documenting various aspects of the system, there is no guarantee that the disclosures obtained by them provides the complete picture regarding the system. Further, given that Meta has been found to purposely mislead the Board and the public on how the cross-check system operates, it is worth investigating the incentives that necessitate the cross-check system in the first place.

Meta claims that the cross-check system works as a check for false positives: they “employ additional reviews for high-visibility content that may violate our policies.” Essentially they want to make sure that content that stays up on the platform and reaches a large audience, is following their content guidelines. However, previous disclosures have proven policy executives have prioritized the company’s ‘business interests’ over removing content that violates their policies; and have waited to act on known problematic content until significant external pressure was built up, including in India. In this context, the cross-check system seems less like a measure designed to protect users who might be exposed to problematic content, and more as a measure for managing public perception of the company.

Thus the Board should investigate both how content gains an audience on the platform, and how it gets moderated. Previous whistleblower disclosures have shown that the mechanics of algorithmically amplified speech, which prioritizes engagement and growth over safety, are easily taken advantage of by bad actors to promote their viewpoints through artificially induced virality. The cross-check system and other measures of content moderation at scale would not be needed if it was harder to spread problematic content on the platform in the first place. Instead of focusing only on one specific system, the Board needs to urge Meta to re-evaluate the incentives that drive content sharing on the platform and come up with ways that make the platform safer.

Meta’s Obligations under Human Rights Law

Recommendation for the Board: The Board must consider the cross-check system to be violative of Meta’s obligations under the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Additionally, the cross-check ranker must be incorporated with Meta’s commitments towards human rights, as outlined in its Corporate Human Rights Policy.

Explanation: Meta’s content moderation, and by extension, its cross-check system, is bound by both international human rights law as well as the Board’s past decisions. At the outset, The system fails the three-pronged test of legality, legitimacy and necessity and proportionality, as delineated under Article 19(3) of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Firstly, this system has been “scattered throughout the company, without clear governance or ownership”, which violates the legality principle, since there is no clear guidance on what sort of speech, or which classes of users, would deserve the treatment of this system. Secondly, there is no understanding about the legitimacy of aims with which this system had been set up in the first place, beyond Meta’s own assertions, which have been countered by evidence to the contrary. Thirdly, the necessity and proportionality of the restriction has to be read along with the Rabat Plan of Action, which requires that for a statement to become a criminal offense, a six-pronged test of threshold is to be applied: a) the social and political context, b) the speaker’s position or status in the society, c) intent to incite the audience against a target group, d) content and form of the speech, e) extent of its dissemination and f) likelihood of harm. As news reports have indicated, Meta has been utilizing the cross-check system to privilege speech from influential users, and in the process, have shielded inflammatory, inciting speech that would have otherwise qualified the Rabat threshold. As such, the third requirement is not fulfilled either.

Additionally, Meta’s own Corporate Human Rights Policy commits to respecting human rights in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). Therefore, the cross-check ranker must incorporate these existing commitments to human rights, including:

The right to freedom of expression:, UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression report A/HRC/38/35 (2018); Joint Statement of international freedom of expression monitors on COVID-19 (March, 2020).

The Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression addresses the regulation of user-generated online content.

The Joint Statement issued regarding Governmental promotion and protection of access to and free flow of information during the pandemic.

The right to non-discrimination: International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), Articles 1 and 4.

Article 1 of the ICERD defines racial discrimination.

Article 4 of the ICERD condemns propaganda and organisations that attempt to justify discrimination or are based on the idea of racial supremacism.

Participation in public affairs and the right to vote: ICCPR Article 25.
The right to remedy: General Comment No. 31, Human Rights Committee (2004) (General Comment 31); UNGPs, Principle 22.

The General Comment discusses the nature of the general legal obligation imposed on State Parties to the Covenant.

Guiding Principle 22 states that where business enterprises identify that they have caused or contributed to adverse impacts, they should provide for or cooperate in their remediation through legitimate processes.

Meta’s obligations to avoid political bias and false positives in its cross-check system

Recommendation for the Board: The Board must urge Meta to adopt and implement the Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability to ensure that it is open about risks to user rights when there is involvement from the State in content moderation. Additionally, the Board must ask Meta to undertake a diversity and human rights audit of its existing policy teams, and commit to regular cultural training for its staff. Finally, the Board must investigate the potential conflicts of interest that arise when Meta’s policy team has any sort of nexus with political parties, and how that might impact content moderation.

Explanation: For the cross-check system to be free from biases, it is important for Meta to come clear to the Board regarding the rationale, standards and processes of the cross check review, and report on the relative error rates of determinations made through cross check compared with ordinary enforcement procedures. It also needs to disclose to the Board in which particular situations it uses the system and in which it does not. Principle 4 under the Foundational Principles of the Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation encourage companies to realize the risk to user rights when there is involvement from the State in processes of content moderation and asks companies to makes users aware that: a) a state actor has requested/participated in an action on their content/account, and b) the company believes that the action was needed as per the relevant law. Users should be allowed access to any rules or policies, formal or informal work relationships that the company holds with state actors in terms of content regulation, the process of flagging accounts/content and state requests to action.

The Board must consider that erroneous lack of action (false positives) might not always be a system's flaw, but a larger, structural issue regarding how policy teams at Meta functions. As previous disclosures have proven, the contours of what sort of violating content gets to stay up on the platform has been ideologically and politically coloured, as policy executives have prioritized the company’s ‘business interests’ over social harmony. In such light, it is not sufficient to simply propose better transparency and accountability measures for Meta to adopt within its content moderation processes to avoid political bias. Rather, the Board’s recommendations must focus on the structural aspect of the human moderator and policy team that is behind these processes. The Board must ask Meta to a) urgently undertake a diversity and human rights audit of its existing team and its hiring processes, b) commit to regular training to ensure that their policy staffs are culturally literate in the socio-political regions they work in. Further, the Board must seriously investigate the potential conflicts of interest that happen when regional policy teams of Meta, with nexus to political parties, are also tasked with regulating content from representatives of these parties, and how that impacts the moderation processes at large.

Finally, in case decision 2021-001-FB-FBR, the Board made a number of recommendations to Meta which must be implemented in the current situation, including: a) considering the political context while looking at potential risks, b) employment of specialized staff in content moderation while evaluating political speech from influential users, c) familiarity with the political and linguistic context d) absence of any interference and undue influence, e) public explanation regarding the rules Meta uses when imposing sanctions against influential users and f) the sanctions being time-bound.

Transparency of the cross-check system

Recommendation for the Board: The Board must urge Meta to adopt and implement the Santa Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability to increase the transparency of its cross-check system.

Explanation: There are ways in which Meta can increase the transparency of not only the cross-check system, but the content moderation process in general. The following recommendations draw from The Santa Clara Principles and the Board’s own previous decisions:

Considering Principle 2 of the Santa Clara Principles: Understandable Rules and Policies, Meta should ensure that the policies and rules governing moderation of content and user behaviors on Facebook are clear, easily understandable, and available in the languages in which the user operates.

Drawing from Principle 5 on Integrity and Explainability and from the Board’s recommendations in case decision 2021-001-FB-FBR which advises Meta to“Provide users with accessible information on how many violations, strikes and penalties have been assessed against them, and the consequences that will follow future violations”, Meta should be able to explain the content moderation decisions to users in all cases: when under review, when the decision has been made to leave the content up, or take it down. We recommend that Meta keeps a publicly accessible running tally of the number of moderation decisions made on a piece of content till date with their explanations. This would allow third parties (like journalists, activists, researchers and the OSB) to keep Facebook accountable when it does not follow its own policies, as has previously been the case.

In the same case decision, the Board has also previously recommended that Meta “Produce more information to help users understand and evaluate the process and criteria for applying the newsworthiness allowance, including how it applies to influential accounts. The company should also clearly explain the rationale, standards and processes of the cross-check review, and report on the relative error rates of determinations made through cross-checking compared with ordinary enforcement procedures.” Thus, Meta should publicly explain the cross check system in detail with examples, and make public the list of attributes that qualify a piece of content for secondary review.

The Operational Principles further provide actionable steps that Meta can take to improve the transparency of their content moderation systems. Drawing from Principle 2: Notice and Principle 3: Appeals, Meta should make a satisfactory appeals process available to users - whether they be decisions to leave up or takedown content. The appeals process should be handled by context aware teams. Meta should then publish the results of the cross check system and the appeals processes as part of their transparency reports including data like total content actioned, rate of success in appeals and cross check process, decisions overturned and preserved etc, which would also satisfy the first Operational Principle: Numbers.

Resources needed to improve the system for users and entities who do not post in English

Recommendations for the Board: The Board must urge Meta to urgently invest in resources to expand Meta’s content moderation services into the local contexts in which the company operates and invest in training data for local languages.

Explanation: The cross-check system is not a fundamentally different problem than content moderation. It has been shown time and time again that Meta’s handling of content from non-Western, non-English language contexts is severely lacking. It has been shown how content hosted on the platform has been used to inflame existing tensions in developing countries, promote religious hatred in India, genocide in Mynmar, and continue to support human traffickers and drug cartels on the platform even when these issues have been identified.

There is an urgent need to invest resources to expand Meta’s content moderation services into the local contexts in which the company operates. The company should make all policies and rule documents available in the languages of its users; invest in creating automated tools that are capable of flagging content that is not posted in English; and add people familiar with the local contexts to provide context aware second level reviews. The Facebook Files show that even according to company engineering, automated content moderation is still not very effective in identifying hate speech and other harmful content. Meta should focus on hiring, training and retaining human moderators who have knowledge of local contexts. Bias training of all content moderators, but especially those who will participate in the second level reviews in the cross check system is also extremely important to ensure acceptable decisions.

Additionally, in keeping with Meta’s human rights commitments, the company should develop and publish a policy for responding to human rights violations when they are pointed out by activists, researchers, journalists and employees as a matter of due process. It should not wait for a negative news cycle to stir them into action as it seems to have done in previous cases.

Benefits and limitations of automated technologies

Meta recently changed its moderation practice wherein it uses technology to prioritize content for human reviewers based on their severity index. Facebook has not specified the technology it uses to prioritize high-severity content but its research record shows that it uses a host of automated frameworks and tools to detect violating content, including image recognition tools, object detection tools, natural language processing models, speech models and reasoning models. One such model is the Whole Post Integrity Embeddings (“WPIE”) which can judge various elements in a given post (caption, comments, OCR, image etc.) to work out the context and the content of the post. Facebook also uses image matching models (SimSearchNet++) that are trained to match variations of an image with a high degree of precision and improved recall; multi-lingual masked language models on cross-lingual understanding such as XLM-R that can accurately identify hate-speech and other policy-violating content across a wide range of languages. More recently, Facebook introduced its machine translation model called the M2M-100 whose goal is to perform bidirectional translation between 7000 languages.

Despite the advances in this field, there are inherent limitations of such automated tools. Experts have repeatedly maintained that AI will get better at understanding context but it will not replace human moderators for the foreseeable future. One such instance where these limitations were exposed was during the COVID-19 pandemic, when Facebook sent its human moderators home - the number of removals flagged as hate speech on its platform more than doubled to 22.5 million in the second quarter of 2020 but the number of successful content appeals was dropped to 12,600 from the 2.3 million figure for the first three months of 2020.

The Facebook Files show that Meta’s AI cannot consistently identify first-person shooting videos, racist rants and even the difference between cockfighting and car crashes. Its automated systems are only capable of removing posts that generate just 3% to 5% of the views of hate speech on the platform and 0.6% of all content that violates Meta’s policies against violence and incitement. As such, it is difficult to accept the company’s claim that nearly all of the hate speech it takes down was discovered by AI before it was reported by users.

However, the benefits of such technology cannot be discounted, especially when one considers automated technology as a way of reducing trauma for human moderators. Using AI for prioritizing content for review can turn out to be effective for human moderators as it can increase their efficiency and reduce harmful effects of content moderation on them. Additionally, it can also limit the exposure of harmful content to internet users. Moreover, AI can also reduce the impact of harmful content on human moderators by allocating content to moderators on the basis of their exposure history. Theoretically, if the company’s claims are to be believed, using automated technology for prioritizing content for review can help to improve the mental health of Facebook’s human moderators.

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/submission-to-the-facebook-oversight-board-policy-on-cross-checks