Centre for Internet and Society

Storytelling and Technology - Sartaj Anand

denisse — 2014-03-12T11:43:19Z

This post outlines the general characteristics of storytelling. The second section is an interview with Sartaj Anand, the founder of EgoMonk and BIllion Strong, who talks about storytelling as a strategy to build trust at the intersections of business and technology. This is the first of a series of installments exploring the potential of storytelling for social change.

CHANGE-MAKER: Sartaj Anand

ORGANIZATION: EgoMonk & Billion Strong

STRATEGY OF CHANGE: Leverage technology by focusing on the relationship between people and technology, and build trust by localizing and personalizing communication

METHOD OF CHANGE: Storytelling

“We all have something to say. Question is: will anyone listen?”

Understanding Comics
Scott McCloud, 1994

Today, everybody seems to be talking about ‘storytelling’. From activists to corporates; they are all jumping on this nostalgic bandwagon and embracing once again an enthralling habit of yesteryear: the ability to tell good stories. The practice has taken an identity of its own. It's distancing itself from its roots in oral tradition, and morphing into a state-of-the-art communication strategy. This is no selfless trend, though. Behind the hype, lies their thirst for (your) attention, and the belief that they do not only have a story to tell, but that it is a story that matters. In the context of “making change” particularly, when political and social crises emerge, the public space is flooded by a series of narratives and discourses as told by different actors. This explosion of stories culminates in an overload of information that could end up saturating its intended audience. This is not only undesirable, but dangerous when underneath the noise lies a message important for human dignity and survival. So, what is it about a story that will make it worthy of your attention? And how can this seemingly simple, yet complex tactic culminate in further engagement?

To explain storytelling as a method to create change, I will focus on how this practice can be utilized to enhance visibility and effectiveness of advocacy practices, as outlined in the research overview. I will start by unpacking ‘storytelling’: focusing on its purpose and functions. I will also look at the the relationship between the storyteller and the audience, and also at how storytelling redefines ‘the public space’. Although I will be putting my best effort to explain the workings behind his method, I will rely on the storytellers themselves to learn about the power of well-crafted and well-delivered stories to make change. This opportunity’s change-actors: Sartaj Anand, The Ugly Indian, Blank Noise, come from different fields and will show very different perspectives of how the narratives of change utilized in their stories, re-articulates how users/citizens/customers interact and experience content.

Telling Stories

So, what is storytelling? And what makes it so different from other forms of narration? I consulted the work of German philosophers Walter Benjamin and Hannah Arendt to unpack the nature of this practice and its ability to transmit knowledge.

“the storyteller takes what he tells from the experience and he in turn makes it the experience of those who are listening”

W. Benjamin, 1977

In Benjamin’s essay “The Storyteller” (1955) he laments the demise of storytelling: “less and less frequently do we encounter people with the ability to tell a tale properly [as if] the ability to exchange experiences [had been taken away from us]”. Having its origins in oral tradition, storytelling for the most part consists of taking experiences worth sharing and disseminating them in the community with a specific, and according to Benjamin, a useful purpose in mind. It could be a moral, a maxim or a practical advice (1977), but at the end of the day, the audience takes away a new piece of information it did not have at the beginning of the story. This lesson may be related to the past of the storyteller or one of his characters, but its value lies in how it can now be extrapolated to the audience’s future.

Ann Rippin's rendition to The Storyteller by Walter Benjamin. Visit her wordpress here.

Hannah Arendt, German-American philosopher from the early 20th century also had a lot to say about storytelling and ‘narratives’. She understood it as a framework, backed up by a strong tradition of its own, and a structure that embodies how our mind works: “the mind doesn’t simply re-create sequences of events as they occur, but it creates new sequences and integrates events into appropriate existing sequences; the mind is constantly forming narratives” (Kieslich, 2013.). This understanding of the practice goes beyond Benjamin’s proposition that we become part of the narration as it occurs. Arendt posits that our mind is already manufactured to construct sequences and connections in the same way in which we build stories -as opposed to the way we structure our essays, novels or tweets- before we tell them. Being such an embedded cognitive process, it feels familiar, comfortable and natural, which derives into a “critical appreciation” for the events of the story, and leads you to make deeper connections on how they relate to your life (Oni, 2012).

(Read more on Arendt and storytelling here: The Story of Reconciliation – Hannah Arendt Center)

However, both Benjamin and Arendt’s analysis is still very focused on the oral vs. prose question. Entering the 21st century we face the question of the role of digital technology and our highly visual culture in facilitating, amplifying or limiting the process of storytelling. On this point, I jumped to the end of the 20th century and looked at one of the many forms of storytelling: the comic. Scott McCloud’s “Understanding the Comic” (1994) takes you through the whole process of creating a coherent interplay of words and pictures that “convey information” and/or produce an “aesthetic response in the viewer”. Why are aesthetics important? , Because, according to McCloud, the inclusion of art is both the rejection and affirmation of our human condition. On one hand, art (or how we respond to it) is a rejection to our basic instincts, allowing us to express needs beyond survival and reproduction. On the other hand, it is a vehicle through which we assert our identities as individuals and pursue a “higher purpose and truth” (1994). Digital storytelling is imbued with visual stimuli: pictures, videos, graphics, that enhance the sensory experience, and as we explored in the Information Design posts (Find Part 1:Information Activism, and Part 2: Information Design) create new (and deeper) channels to approach and understand the message delivered by these stories.

Excerpts of Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud

From these three perspectives we understand the following about storytelling. It is:

A practice rooted in the tradition of sharing experiences

Participatory and interactive: the experience of the storyteller becomes the experience of the audience.

The purpose of storytelling is to pass on a message, moral guidance or practical advice to the audience, through its content.

The form or structure of narratives is determined by sequences of facts and events, which is the same way we build stories in our minds.

The experiential and familiar nature of storytelling makes it easier to engage with and relate to.

The inclusion of images, art and media produces an aesthetic response in the viewer, providing the audience an opportunity for self-expression and freedom.

Translating these characteristics to the theme of the Methods for Social Change project (how to build a sense of citizenship and civicness through technology-mediated practices. More here): storytelling (re)emerges as a promising vehicle for political change, especially when in par with the “technological possibilities” of our times (Benjamin, 1977). If we choose to entertain this thought, we find how its roots in community traditions make stories an excellent meeting point to form solidarity networks and stronger offline communities to sustain activism. The logical and sequential format of stories are interesting mediums, not only to transmit new ideas on citizenship and engagement; but make them relevant and appealing. Finally, 'the moral of the stories' are seeds for introspection and reflection, that may shape how we understand our role in society as a whole. At the end of the day though, it is storytellers who will lead this journey and meeting them is the first step to gauge how the theory of storytelling unfolds in the practice.

In the next section, we will meet some of the actors utilizing this method in different fields - and there are plenty of storytellers out there, gifted in skill and practice conveying an array of messages to an equally diverse public- but before moving on I will close with an excerpt from Lisa Disch’s essay that brings all these points together:

“[Storytelling] is more adequate than arguments to depict ambiguities of a multidimensional social reality”

In other words, it is a practice that strips narratives from all ornaments, displaying the complexities of humanity in its most intuitive and experiential form.

(Story)Tellers

Great storytellers: creators who devote their resources in controlling

this medium to convey their messages effectively”

Understanding Comics
Scott McCloud (1993)

Our first storyteller is Sartaj Anand; an India-based entrepreneur, founder of the innovation and strategy consulting firm: EgoMonk and active member of TED, Ashoka, Sandbox, Kairos Society and the Pearson Foundation networks (More about his work in his Social Good profile). His self-described “unreasonable dream” is to impact one billion people with his work and create “life-changing experiences”. He strives to do this by a) leveraging the relationship between people and technology and b) through his recently launched non-profit Billion Strong. Also, as opposed to other change-makers we’ve interviewed in the project, he comes from an engineering and business background; bringing a for-profit perspective into our melange of multi-stakeholder approaches to change.

The following interview touches on digital storytelling as one of the ways Anand is using to leverage technology. His vision highlights how you cannot disconnect people from the processes you are utilizing to impact their lives. Incorporating a more humane focus in the way we use technology, and in how we construct stories, is according to his experience, the best way to have practices resonate to and be appropriate for the public.

Sartaj Anand,

Founder of EgoMonk and Billion Strong

Tell us about your background and the intersections of your work with technology.

I started with an engineering background and my thesis was on language processing; figuring out how people talk and how that needs construction data. Fundamentally at some point, I figured out that technology is not the problem, people are; so that’s how I moved into my current focus in business: which is innovation strategic consulting. I frequently rely on technology to enable or actualize change but I don’t necessarily create it. The challenge is how we leverage the technology we have [...] and that’s where I can add the most value.

How do you leverage technology in the context of making change then?

I leverage technology in terms of using it but focusing on the ‘people’ side of it”: the relationship between people and technology. That’s the main intersection point. [...] This is what I mean when I talk about technology, innovation, social structures and change.

Ideas for Change from Sartaj Anand

Economically, business models have to replicate and service society. If businesses serve their people, they capture maximum value and gain efficiency over ten, twenty years (and this is appealing to all the capitalists in industrial businesses). However, towards the course of these years a lot of things can change and you progressively become more and more outdated. When you have this premonition, that's the point when you need to step in and cannibalize your own business model.

For example, for seven years, music labels sold cds only. Then Apple came in with iPods and digital music downloads. After milking this for 10 years, what it should have done is fortify it and start streaming music to capture maximum value, like Spotify did. [...] This is a model EgoMonk works with and we try to communicate these things to our clients. They have the power to execute it, but they have to internally feel confident with all their stakeholders, whether it is for-profits with their board; or non-profits with donors and program partners. This is a choice we need to commit to. A lot of the problem in the change process (technology enabled or otherwise) is trust building. At the end of the day you are working with people, and this is a challenge.

In order to build this trust you must be aiming for a deeper and personal communication with your clients. How are you including this in your business model?

We focus a lot on communication and that’s something we rely on increasingly; and I found it has to have a Why-What-How model -borrowing from Simon Sinek's gold circles. In that order.

Storytelling 101 from Sartaj Anand

People don’t buy the 'what' of it, without the 'why' you do it. For example, Apple is great because it works to improve your life, to inspire you, amuse you: make your life better. What they do comes second: Apple is an electronics company, an application company. Last is the how: It makes the iPhone. We apply a similar model and this is something I apply in my storytelling also. I’m a believer that every story has to have an end or a moral: something that is more hopeful and optimistic. Rely on that but decide that also, I’m not the only one around: stories are increasingly personal and local.

Given the personal and experiential nature of storytelling, I assume it is a challenge to mainstream it in your services. Tell us more about the practices you are using to implement it and how they break from more traditional communication practices in the past.

EgoMonk

EgoMonk is an Innovation and Strategic Management Consultancy (More about EgoMonk here). Particularly this means that:

a) We start with the hypothesis that we don't know everything. With that in mind, we borrow amazing frameworks from amazing institutions. For example, Holacracy; (a “purposeful organization” technology that changes how the organization is structured, how decisions are made and how power is distributed); 'How will you win' philosophy from traditional large companies,, where they equate every decision to a couple of questions like what's your winning aspiration?, where will you plan?, how will you win?, what capability systems/processes need to exist to make this a sustainable practice that outlives you? This approach gets us halfway there, [especially] working with people who haven't had access to this before.

EgoMonk's services

b) We localize it. We work with high impact entrepreneurs and turn their life goals into a four week plan. We frame it: What happens if after four weeks, you die. If these are four weeks you have to live: what really matters to you? What do you want to accomplish professionally and personally? Once you go through that exercise we say: What can continue sustainable during your life? What can you take away? We focus on timing and what you have to do. Once you put that concept of mortality into every day's existence, you start behaving differently.

c) We work with gamification. For example, we worked in a factory and completely changed the incentivization for their workers into something that is more fun. The challenge was: how do you improve the process of well-being in an industrial environment. How do we make working enjoyable for them? This model consists of short-term rewards: if you work really hard over this much time, you get 10 points and this gets you a (reward) with your family. This has never happened before.

Billion Strong

Billion Strong is a platform. We want to impact a billion people and mobilize a billion dollars every year. The concept behind it is that the future is completely decoupled from our reality. It is highly utopian and right now we are not there and my hypothesis is that we'll never get there because our perspectives and assumptions keep evolving. This non-profit aims to accelerate the future in our lifetime so we can at least enjoy some of its benefits. It focuses on six things: culture, mobility, technology, art, nutrition and divinity. Each of these will be used as levers to impact a billion people. In the case of Billion Strong, user adoption is the most frequent challenge you face in the non-profit space. I will explain this using our first two projects:

a) Project 1 - Divinity:
We want to take religion, God and spirituality as a lever to impact people. A manifestation of this is the release of an open source tool kit to convert religious institutions into co-working spaces.

Centers of religion are:

Everywhere and permanent

Well known by the community

Community centers

Safe

Non-profit and non-taxable

Underutilized 99% of the time

Disconnected from youth

Centers of religion have always been centers of education and community oriented, but within the last generation they've become prayer halls, and I think this is the wrong way of using this infrastructure. There are a couple of narratives being negotiated here (See box to the left).

In this case [the open source tool-kit] has a framework, and it is dynamic to the point where your choices in real time will influence the policies of this place and their physical manifestation. So you ask questions in a flow chart: Do you want men and women to work together or not?; Do you have the ability to buy new furniture or you want to use the existing furniture?; when you ask these questions you navigate a flow chart, depending on your choices. They will lead to a different output and when they see that, it is immediately empowering. This is storytelling, and this what will help us navigate the adoption issues. It's essentially us saying you own it; you know exactly what is good for your own community. In terms of the narrative, each copy will be different and adapted to its language. It has to be made for this community and everything has to be localized for that story you are telling. The religious and cultural narrative needs to be blended into it.

b) Project 2 - Nutrition:
Meat consumption is a huge challenge and highly unsustainable. We will use kick-start mechanics in a mobile app to trigger and enable change in food habits. We are obviously very digitally inclined right now. It's easy to capitalize on that, but instead of giving them money, we will ask them to skip a meal, go vegetarian for today or for the week and we are going to support that.

Adoption is a huge challenge, so we'll ask them: Where do you stay? They'll say: Amsterdam [for example], and it will provide them with a template. If you are vegetarian for today, for the week, or the month, this is your meal plan and all you need. Users will find meals close to them and won't have to worry about it anymore. And we will map their impact in real time through info-graphics and data visualization. They will be constructing and visualizing their own story in real time and we’ll present it through different narratives.

We are also looking at multi-stakeholderism in this project. Both EgoMonk and Billion Strong seem to be a combination of business, technology and communication strategies. Why multi-stakeholderism?

Three reasons:

a) The future is multi-domain. You will never understand the whole picture if you say: I’m only going to solve water, but what about the pipes, the roads, the environment, infrastructure, cultural issue. One domain is no longer good enough. You will never be a complete expert of the complete ecosystem.

b) Adoption models will always be a challenge and right now it’s a compromised formula. Now it's a zero-sum game. We literally need to escape that and make it future-oriented; make it 1+1 through partnerships.

c) Storytelling is also getting more mainstreamed into change management and multi-stakeholderism. At the end of it, if you tell a good enough story, you can sell and get people to believe in your projects. This inherently builds partnership models. There is something that is permission marketing: all sales in the future are relationship based and indirect sales.(E.g. Red Bull is all about the experience) That’s how we have to be when we talk about multi-stakeholderism. Everything needs to be built in.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

** Next installment will look at how storytelling enhances visibility and accessibility, and how it is being used by Urban Governance groups in Bangalore.**

Sources:

Arendt, Hannah (1994) Essays in Understanding Edited with an Introduction by Jerome Kohn. The literary Trust of Hannah Arendt Bluecher.p.308
Benjamin, Walter. (1977): "The storyteller."89.
Disch,Lisa Jane (1994) Hannah Arendt and the limits of Philosophy. Cornell University Press. p.172-173
Kieslich, Ingo. (2013) "Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt: Storytelling in and as theoretical writing." PhD diss., Vanderbilt University,
McCloud, Scott. (1994)."Understanding comics: The invisible art." Northampton, Mass
Oni, Peter (2012). "The Cognitive Power of Storytelling: Re-reading Hannah Arendt in a Postmodernist/Africanist Context."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/making-change/storytelling-sartaj-anand

Stop Press Carousel

praskrishna — 2013-03-06T04:27:15Z

The silent blocking of URLs by the DoT assaults freedom of expression.

Arindam Mukherjee's article was published in the Outlook on February 22, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Five Questions

On what grounds did the DoT ask for a ban on the 55 Facebook URLs pertaining to Afzal Guru?
Why did the Gwalior court rush into blocking of 73 URLs related to IIPM even though the content was very old and clearly some of it was even prima facie non-defamatory?
Why is the Gwalior court order not being made public?
Why doesn’t DoT keep the whole process transparent by putting up all its block orders on its website, giving reasons in each case?
How many URLs in all has the DoT asked for a ban on so far?

***

It’s the perfect recipe for a potboiler—a sudden, mysterious and arbitrary blocking of web pages, sparked off by an irate ‘educationist’; several upset publications (Outlook included); a government department with a blocked web page; a ministry trying to figure out how to react to a court order that is at the root of all the action, but which no one has been able to see.

As the cliche goes, truth is often stranger than fiction—as the affected parties discovered on February 15. That’s when it became known that the government had sought to block 78 web pages, reportedly following an order from a court in Gwalior. Around 73 of these articles sought to be blocked are on the controversial Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM), promoted by self-styled management guru Arindam Chaudhuri.

What has taken everyone by surprise is how the blocks were executed—in a clandestine manner, without informing the affected parties, without serving them a notice or a copy of the order, or giving them a chance to react or defend themselves. The enormity of the ban is evident from the list of websites targeted, which include The Economic Times, The Indian Express, The Wall Street Journal, FirstPost, Careers360, Rediff.com and Caravan. When it came to Outlook, there was a clear case of overreach, as not just the web pages, but the entire blogs area was blocked for more than eight hours (see Jump Cut).

What is even more surprising is the smokescreen that is being maintained over the Gwalior court order that has caused this consternation on the Internet. At the time of going to print, no one—the affected websites, authors, lawyers or activists—had access to the order or had seen it, and the government was evading media queries on details of the order and the case. Despite repeated requests, the head of the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT), Gulshan Rai, did not speak to Outlook.

So, in the absence of the order, no one even knows who the complainant is. Significantly, IIPM’s Chaudhuri has said that one of his ‘channel partners’ approached the court, though he clearly is the chief beneficiary of the episode. What this entire episode serves up is a blatant use of the law to muzzle press criticism while the government and official machinery have been willy-nilly forced to become mute players.

This surreal, Kafkaesque scenario continues apace at Outlook’s website, where on protesting the block on its blogs, the ISP said, “As only some of the URLs are mentioned in the DoT letter, we have reactivated the website and requested you to delete the mentioned contents,” adding that they had “attached the DoT instructions alongwith”. What they had attached was not one but two DoT orders, both dated February 14. One was, of course, the order about the 78 URLs. The other order came as news: an order on 55 Facebook URLs on Afzal Guru that the DoT wanted blocked.

As expected, internet activists and advocates of freedom of speech are livid. Shivam Vij, founder of kafila.org, one of the blogs that was blocked in the IIPM matter, says, “We were never given a chance to defend or explain. If only the DoT had put up the notice on their website, there would have been a healthier debate on regulation or censorship. But this was done in an opaque and arbitrary manner. If a book is banned, everyone gets to know. Why was there so much secrecy here?”

The arbitrariness of the twin government action also stems from the new IT Act which authorises the government or a competent authority to block or take down content considered “harmful”. And, according to the law, there is no obligation on the authorities’ part to inform the defendants. Cyber law expert Apar Gupta says, “Under the blocking rules, there is nothing that says that a copy of the court order has to be given to the affected parties. The rules also do not talk about the authors being given a chance to explain. It permits ad interim injunction to block content.”

Says Nikhil Pahwa, internet activist and editor of Medianama, which first reported about the IIPM blocks, “It is not clear why the DoT has taken this cloak-and-dagger approach. These are legitimate issues being raised by people regarding IIPM and its students. This is an infringement on the freedom of speech and expression. The DoT should have executed the blocks in a transparent manner by sending the affected parties a copy of the court order and making it public.”

That’s important, because legal experts feel that full facts may not have been considered in the IIPM case. “For this kind of a blocking order, the content should have come to the notice of the plaintiff recently. In this case, most of the content was much older. But sometimes plaintiffs also do not provide full details in a case,” says Gupta. Lawyers also feel that the Gwalior court may not be equipped to deal with litigation on new technologies.

There are other issues. In the IIPM case, the issue is primarily of defamation. But it is not clear whether defamation was established in all the articles that were sought to be taken down, especially a University Grants Commission (UGC) notice. Thus, the evidence that was presented to the court is important. Once again, till the court order becomes public, no one will know who the complainant was or what evidence was presented. The temporary ban on UGC’s web page is particularly surprising—and this has been noted by Shashi Tharoor—considering it is an independent regulator. “The regulatory body’s job is to regulate and nobody considers its notice as defamatory,” says Parminder Jeet Singh of IT for Change, an organisation dealing with internet issues.

The real purpose of such exercises, say experts, is to create a scare and embroil people in the legal process so that the process itself becomes a punishment and acts as a deterrent to others to engage in such writing. And that is why such cases are filed in remote and unusual destinations like Gwalior, Silchar, Dehradun and Guwahati. “There is a concept of forum shopping and forum shifting where cases are filed at remote destinations and by asking for huge damages, an attempt is made to scare people away from free speech. There are also many bullies who use defamation to create a scare effect. IIPM seems to have pioneered forum shopping in India,” says Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).

The problem, everyone agrees, stems from the faulty nature of the Information Technology Act, which is open to interpretation and misuse. Says Singh, “The law tries to cover everything under a single head. It does not look specifically at the nuances of new media and give an appropriate response. So it is misused.” It is time that DoT became transparent and stopped its arbitrary, covert war against freedom of expression.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/outlook-feb-22-2013-arindam-mukherjee-stop-press-counsel

Stockholm Internet Forum 2017

praskrishna — 2017-06-06T13:43:25Z

Elonnai Hickok participated in the Stockholm Internet Forum 2017 held in Stockholm from May 15 to 18, 2017. She spoke on the panel "Private sector and civil society collaboration to advance freedom online". The event was organized by Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.

Pre-SIF 15 May at Sida HQ

Welcoming and informal lunch at Sida 12.00 – 14.00 (Location: Oasen)

Pre-SIF regional sessions: 14.00 – 17.00 (breaks included)

MENA: Access, power and gender (Location: Hörsalen)

AFRICA: Inequality and the digital revolution in Africa (Location: Oasen)

LATIN AMERICA: Human rights and technology in Latin America: Where to from here? (Location: Room 19, Asante)

EURASIA: Media freedom and fact checking practices (Location: Room 18, Djenné)

SOUTH EAST ASIA: Regional internet freedom unconference (Location: Room 23, Quirigua)

STUDY VISIT: Kista Science City

Mingle: 17.00 – 18.00

Dinner: 18.00 – 20.00

Pre-SIF 16 May at Sida HQ

Welcome and framing access and power 09.00 – 11.30 (break included, location: Oasen)

Pre-SIF Parallel sessions: 11.30 – 13.00

1A From divides to dividends – DDP and SDG17 (Location: Oasen)

1B Online threats: Operational response and kick-ass solutions (Location: Hörsalen)

Mingle and lunch: 13.00 – 15.00 (Location: Oasen)

Pre-SIF Parallel sessions: 15.00 – 17.00

2A Financial services in a digital era: Development, livelihoods and privacy (Location: Oasen)

2B Responsible data forum: Open source investigation for human rights (Location: Hörsalen)

Mingle: 17.00 – 18.00

Dinner: 18.00 – 20.00

SIF 17 May at Münchenbryggeriet

Opening and main session 1: 9.00 – 11.00 (Location: Mässhallen)

Welcoming remarks by Sida Director General Lennart Båge

Speech by Swedish Minister of Culture and Democracy Alice Bah Kuhnke

Main session 1: Equal access – Distributed power

The theme of SIF 2017 is “Access and Power” – a duality that can be analysed in many different ways. It is not enough to have access to the Internet, ICT’s and digital tools to achieve social justice and development outcomes. The question of what people have access to and what possibilities access gives also needs to be addressed. Access to the Internet is more than technical aspects and solutions – there are also dimensions related to rights, policy and power that need to be addressed.

At SIF we are keen on framing the current struggles and challenges in order to formulate possible ways ahead. One way to approach this is to discuss the co-relation between access and power. The first main session on the various aspects of access and power, is designed to get the conversation started.

Speech by State Secretary Annika Söder 11.00 – 11.15 (Location: Mässhallen)

Coffee break 11.15 – 11.45

Parallel sessions: 11.45 – 13.00

#SIF1A Digital Identity (Location: Mässhallen)

#SIF1B Community access – Helping the last 4 billion get connected (Location: Fogelström)

#SIF1C Gender based violence online: levelling the discussion (Location: Riddarsalen)

Mingle and lunch: 13.00 – 14.00

Parallel sessions: 14.00 – 15.30

#SIF2A OPEN SIF (Location: Mässhallen)

#SIF2B The promises and risks of the platform economy (Location: Fogelström)

#SIF2C The global shut down epidemic – From rights, tech and economic perspective (Location: Riddarsalen)

Coffee break 15.30 – 16.00

Breakout sessions: 16.00 – 17.30

#SIFB1 The (alternative) truth is out there (Location: Mässhallen)

#SIFB2 Private sector and civil society collaboration to advance freedom online (Location: Galleriet)

#SIFB3 Access and human rights in the smart city (Location: Riddarsalen)

#SIFB4 Empowering technologies in hostile environments (Location: Milles)

#SIFB5 Freedom Online Coalition: Open forum (Location: Fogelström)

Reflections and highlights from the day: 17.45 – 18.45

(Location: Mässhallen)

Mingle and Dinner: 19.00 – 21.00

SIF 18 May at Münchenbryggeriet

Welcome and keynote: 09.00 – 09.30 (Location: Mässhallen)

Parallel sessions: 09.30 – 11.00

#SIF3A OPEN SIF (Location: Mässhallen)

#SIF3B Digital rights 2.0: challenges and opportunities to empowerment (Location: Fogelström)

#SIF3C Safe media in conflict and chaos (Location: Riddarsalen)

Coffee break: 11.00 – 11.30

Main session 2: 11.30 – 13.00 (Location: Mässhallen)

A positive outlook: Leave no one offline

Half of the world’s population — specifically women, the poor and marginalised populations in developing countries — are still being left offline. What is needed to reach those still offline?

Beyond access, there are still many obstacles to achieving a digital inclusive society. Access to the Internet, ICT’s and digital tools is not only a catalyst for economic growth but increasingly a means for people to participate in today’s society. Too often access is measured by number of subscribers. This session will address access and power from a multidimensional approach – including infrastructure, affordability and contextual factors such as regulation and social and power structures.

Mingle and lunch: 13.00 – 14.00

Closing session: 14.00 – 15.00 (Location: Mässhallen)

This session will focus on summarizing knowledge and experiences shared at SIF17 and mapping the road ahead – identifying constraints but also opportunities for equal access and Internet freedom in the strive for global development and a digital inclusive society. The closing session will be interactive with the participants being the centre of the discussion.

Side happenings

During breaks you will have the opportunity to develop your digital skills, participate in discussions and expand your knowledge at this year’s side happenings.

16 May at Sida HQ

11.00 – 17.30

New media documentation clinic with Witness

(Location: Room 19 Asante)

11.00 – 17.00

Developing Internet universality indicators with UNESCO and the APC Internet indicators consortium

(Location: Room 21 Tsodilo)

14.30 – 17.30

Local access and community based networks with APC and ISOC

(Location: Djenné)

17 – 18 May at Münchenbryggeriet

All day

Digital security clinic with Access Now

(Location: Mässtorget)

Healing justice pod with Astraea Foundation

(Location: Bergrummet)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/stockholm-internet-forum-2017

Sting job by Hyderabad scientist exposes fake journals

Admin — 2018-10-17T02:06:21Z

Scientists have at last found a cure for Schlodomoniasis -- a deadly brain infection caused by the "inter-galactic parasite Klaousmodium cruzi" -- they claim to have identified for the first time.

The article was published in Business Standard on October 11, 2018. Subbiah Arunachalam was quoted.

Beth Smith and co-workers at "Sanchez Institute for Biomedical Sciences for Doopidoo Research" in Morocco have published their discovery in three science journals and also reported a novel method called "Magnetic Oddities Radiation Therapy (MORTY)" to treat the infection. The study was carried out in "Wakandan population".

If readers are breaking their heads to understand the startling findings and decipher the strange words like "Wakandan" and "Doopidoo", Farooq Ali Khan, a college professor and PhD student in Hyderabad and a co-author of the paper, had the last laugh.

"It was not intended to be a scientific paper," he told this correspondent in an email. "It was my sting operation to expose publishers of predatory journals who are churning out fake science for profit."

Open access journals are supposed to provide an online platform for rapid dissemination of latest updates in science and technology. Their publishers don't charge the readers as access to these journals is free, but they charge the authors wanting to have their research papers published in these journals.

Inspired by previous publishing "stings", Khan wanted to test whether open access journals would publish an obviously absurd paper liberally salted with nonsense for the sake of money from gullible authors anxious to publish.

He created a spoof manuscript titled "Newer Tools to Fight Inter-Galactic Parasites and their Transmissibility in Zygirion Simulation", and submitted it to several suspect journals from the list kept online by Jeffrey Beall -- an associate professor and librarian at the University of Colorado who coined the term "predatory journal" -- as a public service to his colleagues.

All the hilarious fake names like "schleem", "dinglebop" and "schwitinization", that do not make any sense, as well as images and graphs published in the paper, were fabricated.

The "Zyrgion simulation", and "intergalactic parasites" are all references to "Rick and Morty" -- a US Cartoon Network's animated science fiction programme about the misadventures of mad scientist Rick Sanchez and his grandson Morty Smith.

Khan, a great fan of "Rick and Morty", submitted the paper with Beth Smith (Rick's granddaughter in the cartoon show) as the corresponding author and himself as co-author. Two other authors' names were made-up, and Sukant Khurana -- a scientist at Central Drug Research Institute in Lucknow, who offered to help Khan in this sting, was another author -- all affiliated to an institution in Morocco that does not exist.

The so-called "Magnetic Oddities Radiation Therapy" developed by the authors to treat the brain infection is again nothing but an expansion of "MORTY", a character in the cartoon show.

Anyone with commonsense would have noticed all the nonsense and consigned the paper to trash, but Khan surprisingly found it was accepted for publication by 10 journals for fees ranging from $75 to $650.

After some bargaining over fees, three scientific journals -- ARC Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, IOSR Journal of Pharmacy and Biological Sciences, and Clinical Biotechnology and Microbiology -- published the paper without a second glance.

Khan says his "scientific prank" was intended to expose the seriousness of predatory journal industry and to create awareness among people who are beginning their careers in science. "These predatory journals are polluting the scientific record with junk science and are also resulting in fake news."

"When the Open Access Declaration was drafted in 2002, no one would have imagined that many unscrupulous individuals would pollute the entire system of scholarly communication with predatory journals solely with the idea of making money," Subbiah Arunachalam, renowned information scientist and Distinguished Fellow of the Centre for Internet and Society in Bengaluru, told this correspondent in an email.

"Unfortunately, many Indians -- both individuals and companies -- are in this business," he said. "Predatory journals pose a big threat to the integrity of research."

"These are shameful acts by greedy publishers," Subhash Lakhotia, a professor of zoology at the Benaras Hindu University, told this correspondent in an email. "Until we stop payments of all kinds of open access charges and modify the present faulty assessment system that relies on numbers of publications, predation in one or the other form would continue."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/business-standard-ians-october-11-2018-sting-job-by-hyderabad-scientist-exposes-fake-journals

Stiff Resistance Dogs India's ID Plan

praskrishna — 2011-04-02T09:59:06Z

An article about the UID project by Indrajit Basu in Asia Times Online.

Tembhali is little known beyond its neighborhood in northern Maharashtra. Yet, as Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi descended by on Wednesday, the tiny hamlet with less than 1,500 residents suddenly became the center of attraction in the global arena of e-governance.

India's prime minister and the ruling Congress party's leader were helicoptered in to officially flag India's most ambitious attempt to transform the way the state reaches its citizens - and also the world's largest identity program.

The so-called Unique Identification (UID) mission, which has been dubbed locally as "Aadhar" ("foundation"), the project will create unique biometric identification numbers for each and every one of India's 1.2 billion people.

Ambitious yet highly controversial, UID numbers will be linked to fingerprints, iris scans, personal information, a microchip for easy scanning, and more. Led by a new government agency called the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the project is spearheaded by Nandan Nilekeni, one of India's most famous techie-entrepreneurs as the co-founder of Infosys, who has been given ministerial powers and a magnanimous (rumored to be US$3 billion or more) budget to implement the grand plan.

According to Nilekeni, among the scores of advantages for the country's people, the millions of India's poor who are without access to the government's plethora of welfare schemes would benefit the most from the new identification system. Much like the mobile telephony, the UID number would connect the poor to the broader and advancing economy of India, he says.

"The government has taken up this project for two reason; one is there are large number of Indians specially those who are urban migrants and rural poor who do not have any form of acknowledged existence by the state and therefore they face the challenge of harassment in their lives. They do not get access to public services either. So the one of the main purposes of this program is to make life easier for the millions of poor, migrants and marginalized (expected to be over 300 million) people. As well as to give inclusion to them," said Nilekeni.

The other is to make all government welfare schemes far more efficient by ensuring that they reach "each and every deserving poor", he says.

Even as the impoverished tribal farming community in Tembhali - many of whom do not even own the land they till - wonder how a unique identity, as Manmohan declared on Wednesday, "can change their lives", UID is meeting stiff resistance from civil liberties groups, privacy advocates, and legal eagles.

Critics condemn the UID as a blatant intrusion to privacy, a tool that will increase bureaucracy and corruption, and say that in addition to being hugely expensive and even illegal, the UID goes against basic human values.

"This project, has been initiated without any prelude: there is no project document; there is no feasibility study; there has been no cost-to-benefit analysis and there are serious concerns about data and identity theft," said Gopal Krishna, Member Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties.

Worse, Krishna added, a project "that could change the status of the people in this country, with regard to security and constitutional rights has been initiated without any legal authorization; just on the basis of an executive order".

The strongest opposition to the project has been generated by the fact that it aims to create a huge digital database containing sensitive personal information in one central location. This is a security risk of "immense" proportions, according to critics.

"Given that the country has hardly any capability in securing its digital database, and an absence of privacy laws, UID's plans of storing its data in one centralized database is an immense risk," said Sunil Abraham, an activist at the People Union for Civil Liberties. "The trouble with a centralized infrastructure is that if it is compromised, then all of it will be compromised, which can result in the collapse of the country's information systems."

Nilekeni deflects these criticisms, saying that the UID Authority will use "the best expertise for security and we also have a policy of proactively publishing strategy policy report and committee reports on our website as well." But arguments against the project stretch on.

"The other opposition is the use of biometrics for ID," says Abraham. "Our fear is that most parts of the country do not have power and if the system mandates that every time a rural resident has to prove his identity biometrically for say collecting subsidized food, chances are that the process will be slower and more prone to failure because of lack of infrastructure."

That, according to critics, could give rise to newer complication or even manipulation of the biometric data - and hence an additional opportunity for corruption.

"A typical unlettered person does not understand the complexities of biometric data collection and verification," says Jiti Nichani, a researcher and an advocate, Alternative Law Forum. "Given the rampant bureaucracy and corruption in the country, this would give yet another reason for the corrupt to siphon off the largesse of a welfare scheme elsewhere; corruption will increase manifold as a consequence."

Still, its flip side is not really devoid of selling points; some of UID's beneficial characteristics are undeniable.

For one, experts say, for every rupee spent on the government's welfare schemes, lack of identity of a poor Indian results in just 15 paisa reaching them. UID then can really revolutionize the way government services are delivered.

Besides, inability to prove identity is not only one of the biggest barriers that prevent the poor from accessing benefits and subsidies, or stymie the government from reaching out to the deserving. It also stops the government formulating appropriate welfare polices, plugging leakages, and above all, eliminating fraud and duplicate identities.

UID, say its proponents, will no longer allow someone to represent themselves differently across a number of agencies, which could solve a lot these problems.

"A UID will enable the poor grab the right to education, get jobs on migration, get medical benefits and even open a bank account and get a mobile phone connection," said Nilekni. "The transformative capability of the UID scheme can be enormous."

Nevertheless, providing an identity to one billion plus Indians in a country so devoid of basic infrastructure is a Herculean task.

Its real challenge may not lie in the concerns that critics have raised, but perhaps in the politics of governance and its reforms. Experts say the success of the project depends on the effective use of political authority, and how Nilekeni and Manmohan manage to address corruption in the political and official systems.

Nilekeni though is undaunted. "I am aware that there are a lot of challenges and this is a humongous project," he said. "But there is a lot of political will and support, and the government is firmly convinced that this project could change the face of India."

Read the original in Asia Times Online

Note: Sunil Abraham does not work for People's Union for Civil Liberties

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/stiff-resistance

Steps towards Integrated Open Water Data

sumandro — 2017-11-02T09:58:13Z

Multiplicity of data collection agencies, formats, and disclosure practices and conditionalities make it very difficult to access interoperable and open data about water resources and systems in India. Barriers to accessing water data impede not only academic and applied research on related topics but also public consumption of information and critical decision making. DataMeet and CIS are proud to collaborate on identifying and addressing the challenges to open up and integrate data and information in the water sector. Supported by a generous grant from Arghyam, we are undertaking an initial study of open water data resources in India and taking first steps towards developing a Free and Open Source data portal for water resources information in India. Here is an initial note about the project. The key leaders and contributors of this project are Craig Dsouza, Namita Bhatawdekar, Riddhi Munde, and Jinda Sandbhor, all of whom are members of the Pune Chapter of DataMeet.

Project website: https://datameet-pune.github.io/open-water-data/

Contact: pune@datameet.org

The problem statement

Following devastating precipitation of more than 300mm in 24 hours in early December 2015 the city of Chennai was flooded unlike anything it had seen in recent history. A combination of bad urban planning along with heavy precipitation events had made such eventualities all the more likely. But in the case of such storms what parts of the city are likely to flood? What parts will remain unaffected by the deluge. Specific answers to these questions would help city planners plan better for such emergencies.

Only two months after Chennai was waist deep in water, the city of Latur in 2016 ran dry. The Manjara reservoir, on the river of the same name, the city's source of municipal water supply had not a drop left. With more than 4 months left until the rains would replenish the waters of the dam, the city was now reliant on water being transported in bulk via train tankers from more than 300 kms away, news that made daily headlines. The scale of sugarcane cultivation in the region was being called into question.. Was it possible that lowering the allocation of water to irrigation could have preserved enough water for the city's domestic water needs?

Each of these questions call for answers relating to the exact stock of water resources, and how fast the water flows from one part of the water cycle to another. For example, knowing current soil moisture levels and daily precipitation can we estimate groundwater recharge with a high degree of accuracy? If seasonal groundwater fluctuations and river flows in a watershed or sub-basin is known can we estimate actual quantum groundwater footprint of the crop irrigated with groundwater in that river basin? If new industries are being set up in close proximity to each other what might be the effect of these industries on groundwater stocks in the vicinity.

Towards an (integrated and open) data solution

Deriving cause-effect links between the scale of use of water in a particular region and its possible effect on the status of water resources in the vicinity is an extremely difficult exercise because water stocks and flows are affected by so many causal links which need to be studied and quantified in an integrated manner. An integral part of any water resource study is developing a water balance model to estimate water availability and water demand.

Water availability

Precipitation in the form of rainfall and snowfall,
Live storage capacity in reservoirs,
Soil moisture,
Groundwater levels (and fluctuation), and
Surface water flows in rivers.

Water use/demand

Domestic water use: Human Population x estimated per capita consumption (or prescribed norm for domestic water consumption),
Livestock water use: Livestock population x estimated per capita requirement,
Agriculture and Forests: Evapotranspiration data (derived from temperatures (daily/monthly), wind speeds, humidity (daily/monthly), soil moisture & type, type of Agricultural land use, stage of plant growth, and
Industry: Nature of industry and annual production x water required per unit of production.

Overcoming the data challenge

Unknown to many, reasonably high resolution data does exist of these variables both across space and time, as described in detail below. Much of this data though hasn't been made inter-operable. We need tools to model water data, putting together real-time data for water availability and demand onto one platform that can facilitate discussions around it. However what we have are either proprietary river basin modeling software (expensive) OR free open source tools (programming/skill intensive).

They demand:

knowledge of programming or know-how of technical tools and unavoidably
knowledge of the various data sources (to piece together the puzzle)

What if instead, we had access to a tool, open, free, accessible to everyone through a browser (hence no need to download software) and most importantly intuitive to use and understand to someone with little technical or programming knowledge.

What we propose and who is it for?

To understand and take the first steps towards developing a completely free and open source data portal for water resources information in India.

Different groups would have different kinds of needs for water data. Researchers for instance tend to think of larger scales (river basins, sub-basins) whereas Gram Panchayat members may not think beyond the village or watershed scale. Hence this proposal aims at macro and micro scales, trying to determine needs at each level and enhancing our platform to meet these different needs.

The project will generate:

A web app prototype that will collate secondary data,
A paper that outlines sources of data, type of data, level to which available (GP, village, etc.) and nature of the source (Paid/ unpaid/ format available etc.), and
A model WSP format, along with indications for what data already exists in secondary sources.

The users of this work will be:

Researchers/Journalists in the water sector, and
Gram Panchayat Members (to effectively develop water security plans, monitor and govern their local water resources).

Project Team

The project team is supported by Nisha Thompson (Director, DataMeet) and Sumandro Chattapadhyay.

Craig Dsouza

Craig is an independent researcher in the development sector with a keen interest in water resources and agriculture. He has a Master’s degree in Energy and Environmental Policy (2013) and has worked as a researcher with the Society for Promoting Participative Ecosystem Mgmt, undertaking river basin studies in central and eastern India. Craig believes that the democratization of data and tools to derive insights from it holds tremendous potential for addressing issues of inequity and environmental sustainability in India. He contributes to these efforts as co-ordinator of Datameet-Pune, a city chapter of datameet.org.

GitHub: https://github.com/craigdsouza
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dsouza_craig
Website: http://unravellingindia.in/

Namita Bhatawdekar

Namita is a web developer with 10 years of experience developing web applications and web-based data visualizations. She has worked on developing data Visuaizations for corporate businesses as well as in the research sector. She worked with Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Development (MIT's research lab in Singapore) as a Data Visualization expert where she visualized simulation outputs of autonomous vehicles to evaluate urban transport policies. Her work was showcased in many national and international conferences. She has a keen interest in solving social problems using data and is part of Datameet Pune, city chapter of datameet.org.

GitHub: https://github.com/bnamita
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/namitabhatawdekar/
Website: https://bnamita.github.io/Portfolio/

Riddhi Munde

Riddhi is a GIS and Remote Sensing professional with 2.5 yrs of experience. She has a Master's degree in Geoinformatics and Earth Observation from ITC, University of Twente, The Netherlands. Her project experience includes implementing GIS and remote sensing solutions across a number of industries. She is interested in location and remote sensing analytics, ML, Image processing, web based visualizations and is proficient in ArcGIS, QGIS, PostGIS, Web mapping, algorithm development in Python and R and cloud computing. At Datameet she contributes with her know how of remote sensing to further improve data access in water and agriculture.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/riddhimunde/

Jinda Sandbhor

Jinda Sandbhor is an action researcher associated with Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, Pune, where he works to document and analyze issues related to the water and energy sectors in India. He actively supports socio-political movements in Maharashtra, Odisha and North Karnataka. In the past he has conducted research studies on water conflicts around rivers and major dams, socio-economic impacts of droughts, impacts of coal based thermal power on water and the local environment. He has been associated with the Datameet-Pune chapter since its beginning in 2015 and here seeks to improve access to data on social and environmental subjects.

Website: http://jinda.manthan-india.org/author/jinda/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/steps-towards-integrated-open-water-data

Statement of Civil Society Members and Groups Participating in the "Best Bits" pre-IGF meeting at Baku in 2012

pranesh — 2012-12-07T08:06:25Z

The Centre for Internet & Society was one of the signatories for this submission made to the ITU on November 16, 2012.

Read the statement of civil society members and groups participating in the “Best Bits” pre-IGF meeting at Baku in 2012

We thank the Secretariat of the ITU for making the opportunity to submit our views.

Nevertheless, the process of the revision of the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) has not been sufficiently inclusive and transparent, despite some recent efforts to facilitate public participation. Fundamental to the framing of public policy must be the pursuit of the public interest and fundamental human rights, and we urge Member States to uphold and protect these values.

We as civil society organizations wish to engage with the World Conference on International Telecommunication (WCIT) process in this spirit. Member States, in most cases, have not held open, broad-based, public consultations in the lead up to the WCIT, nor have they indicated such a process for the WCIT itself.

In order to address this deficiency, and at a minimum, we would urge:

All Member States and regional groups to make their proposals available to the public in sufficient time to allow for meaningfulpublic participation;
All delegates to support proposals to open sessions of the WCIT meeting to the public;
The ITU Secretariat to increase transparency of the WCIT including live webcast with the video, audio, and text transcripts, as far as possible, to enable participation by all, including persons with disabilities;
The ITU Secretariat, Member States, and regional groups to make as much documentation publicly available as possible on the ITU's website, so that civil society can provide substantive input on proposals as they are made available;
Member States to encourage and facilitate civil society participation in their national delegations;
The ITU to create spaces during the WCIT for civil society to express their views, as was done during the WSIS process.

Given the uncertainty about the nature of final proposals that will be presented, we urge delegates that the following criteria be applied to any proposed revisions of the ITRs.

That any proposed revisions are confined to the traditional scope of the ITRs, where international regulation is required around technical issues is limited to telecommunications networks and interoperability standards.
There should be no revisions to the ITRs that involve regulation of the Internet Protocol and the layers above.
There should be no revisions that could have a negative impact on affordable access to the Internet or the public's rights to privacy and freedom of expression.

More generally we call upon the ITU to promote principles of net neutrality, open standards, affordable access and universal service, and effective competition.

Signatories:

Access (Global)
Association for Progressive Communications (Global)
Bangladesh NGOs Network for Radio and Communication (Bangladesh)
Bytes for All (Pakistan)
Center for Democracy and Technology (United States of America)
Centre for Community Informatics Research (Canada)
Centre for Internet and Society (India)
Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (Eastern and Southern Africa)
Consumer Council of Fiji (Fiji)
Consumers International (Global)
Dynamic Coalition on Internet Rights and Principles (IRP) (Global)
Electronic Frontier Finland (Finland)
Imagining the Internet Center (United States of America)
Instituto Nupef (Brazil)
Internet Democracy Project (India)
Internet Research Project (Pakistan)
Global Partners and Associates (United Kingdom)
GobernanzadeInternet.co (Colombia)
ICT Watch Indonesia (Indonesia)
Instituto Brasileiro de Defesa do Consumidor / Brazilian Institute for
Consumer Defense (Brazil)
InternetNZ (New Zealand)
IT for Change (India)
Media Education Center (Armenia)
ONG Derechos Digitales (Chile)
OpenMedia (Canada)
Public Knowledge (United States of America)
Thai Netizen Network (Thailand)
Ginger Paque (Venezuala)
Nnenna Nwakanma (Côte d'Ivoire)
Sonigitu Ekpe (Nigeria)
Wolfgang Kleinwächter (Denmark)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/statement-of-civil-society-members-and-groups-at-best-bits-pre-igf-meeting

State Surveillance and Human Rights Camp: Summary

elonnai — 2013-07-12T16:02:51Z

On December 13 and 14, 2012, the Electronic Frontier Foundation organized the Surveillance and Human Rights Camp held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The meeting examined trends in surveillance, reasons for state surveillance, surveillance tactics that governments are using, and safeguards that can be put in place to protect against unlawful or disproportionate surveillance.

This research was undertaken as part of the 'SAFEGUARDS' project that CIS is undertaking with Privacy International and IDRC.

The camp also examined different types of data, understanding tools that governments can use to access data, and looked at examples of surveillance measures in different contexts. The camp was divided into plenary sessions and individual participatory workshops, and brought together activists, researchers, and experts from all over the world. Experiences from multiple countries were shared, with an emphasis on the experience of surveillance in Latin America. Among other things, this blog summarizes my understanding of the discussions that took place.

The camp also served as a platform for collaboration on the Draft International Principles on Communications Surveillance and Human Rights. These principles seek to set an international standard for safeguards to the surveillance of communications that recognizes and upholds human rights, and provide guidance for legislative changes related to communications and communications meta data to ensure that the use of modern communications technology does not violate individual privacy. The principles were first drafted in October 2012 in Brussels, and are still in draft form. A global consultation is taking place to bring in feedback and perspective on the principles.

The draft principles were institutionalized for a number of reasons including:

Currently there are no principles or international best standards specifically prescribing necessary and important safeguards to surveillance of communication data.
Practices around surveillance of communications by governments and the technology used by governments is rapidly changing, while legislation and safeguards protecting individual communications from illegal or disproportionate surveillance are staying the same, and thus rapidly becoming outdated.
New legislation that allows surveillance through access to communication data that is being proposed often attempts to give sweeping powers to law enforcement for access to data across multiple jurisdictions, and mandates extensive cooperation and assistance from the private sector including extensive data retention policies, back doors, and built in monitoring capabilities.
Surveillance of communications is often carried out with few safeguards in place including limited transparency to the public, and limited forms of appeal or redress for the individual.

This has placed the individual in a vulnerable position as opaque surveillance of communications is carried out by governments across the world — the abuse of which is unclear. The principles try to address these challenges by establishing standards and safeguards which should be upheld and incorporated into legislation and practices allowing the surveillance of communications.

A summary of the draft principles is below. As the principles are still a working draft, the most up to date version of the principles can be accessed here .

Summary of the Draft International Principles on Communications Surveillance and Human Rights

Legality: Any surveillance of communications undertaken by the government must be codified by statute.

Legitimate Purpose: Laws should only allow surveillance of communications for legitimate purposes.

Necessity: Laws allowing surveillance of communications should limit such measures to what is demonstrably necessary.

Adequacy: Surveillance of communications should only be undertaken to the extent that is adequate for fulfilling legitimate and necessary purposes.

Competent Authority: Any authorization for surveillance of communications must be made by a competent and independent authority.

Proportionality: All measures of surveillance of communications must be specific and proportionate to what is necessary to achieve a specific purpose.

Due process: Governments undertaking surveillance of communications must respect and guarantee an individual’s human rights. Any interference with an individual's human rights must be authorized by a law in force.

User notification: Governments undertaking surveillance of communications must allow service providers to notify individuals of any legal access that takes place related to their personal information.

Transparency about use of government surveillance: The governments ability to survey communications and the process for surveillance should be transparent to the public.

Oversight: Governments must establish an independent oversight mechanism to ensure transparency and accountability of lawful surveillance measures carried out on communications.

Integrity of communications and systems: In order to enable service providers to secure communications securely, governments cannot require service providers to build in surveillance or monitoring capabilities.

Safeguards for international cooperation: When governments work with other governments across borders to fight crime, the higher/highest standard should apply.

Safeguards against illegitimate access: Governments should provide sufficient penalties to dissuade against unwarranted surveillance of communications.

Cost of surveillance: The financial cost of the surveillance on communications should be borne by the government undertaking the surveillance.

Types of Data

The conversations during the camp reviewed a number of practices related to surveillance of communications, and emphasized the importance of establishing the draft principles. Setting the background to various surveillance measures that can be carried out by the government, the different categories of communication data that can be easily accessed by governments and law enforcement were discussed. For example, law enforcement frequently accesses information such as IP address, account name and number, telephone number, transactional records, and location data. This data can be understood as 'non-content' data or communication data, and in many jurisdictions can easily be accessed by law enforcement/governments, as the requirements for accessing communication data are lower than the requirements for accessing the actual content of communications. For example, in the United States a court order is not needed to access communication data whereas a judicial order is needed to access the content of communications.[1]

Similarly, in the UK law enforcement can access communication data with authorization from a senior police officer.[2]

It was discussed how it is concerning that communication data can be accessed easily, as it provides a plethora of facts about an individual. Given the sensitivity of communication data and the ability for personal information to be derived from the data, the ease that law enforcement is accessing the data, and the unawareness of the individual about the access- places the privacy of users at risk.

Ways of Accessing Data

Ways in which governments and law enforcement access information and associated challenges was discussed, both in terms of the legislation that allows for access and the technology that is used for access.

Access and Technology

In this discussion it was pointed out that in traditional forms of accessing data governments are no longer effective for a number of reasons. For example, in many cases communications and transactions, etc., that take place on the internet are encrypted. The ubiquitous use of encryption means more protection for the individual in everyday use of the internet, but serves as an obstacle to law enforcement and governments, as the content of a message is even more difficult to access. Thus, law enforcement and governments are using technologies like commercial surveillance software, targeted hacking, and malware to survey individuals. The software is sold off the shelf at trade shows by commercial software companies to law enforcement and governments. Though the software has been developed to be a useful tool for governments, it was found that in some cases it has been abused by authoritarian regimes. For example in 2012, it was found that FinSpy, a computer espionage software made by the British company Gamma Group was being used to target political dissidents by the Government of Bahrain. FinSpy has the ability to capture computer screen shots, record Skype chats, turn on computer cameras and microphones, and log keystrokes.[3]

In order to intercept communications or block access to sites, governments and ISPs also rely on the use of deep packet inspection (DPI).[4] Deep packet inspection is a tool traditionally used by internet service providers for effective management of the network. DPI allows for ISP's to monitor and filter data flowing through the network by inspecting the header of a packet of data and the content of the packet.[5] With this information it is possible to read the actual content of packets, and identify the program or service being used.[6]

DPI can be used for the detection of viruses, spam, unfair use of bandwidth, and copyright enforcement. At the same time, DPI can allow for the possibility of unauthorized data mining and real time interception to take place, and can be used to block internet traffic whether it is encrypted or not.[7]

Governmental requirements for deep packet inspection can in some cases be found in legislation and policy. In other cases it is not clear if it is mandatory for ISP's to provide DPI capabilities, thus the use of DPI by governments is often an opaque area. Recently, the ITU has sought to define an international standard for deep packet inspection known as the "Y.2770" standard. The standard proposes a technical interoperable protocol for deep packet inspection systems, which would be applicable to "application identification, flow identification, and inspected traffic types".[8]

Access and Legislation

The discussions also examined similarities across legislation and policy which allows governments legal access to data. It was pointed out that legislation providing access to different types of data is increasingly becoming outdated, and is unable to distinguish between communications data and personal data. Thus, relevant legislation is often based on inaccurate and outdated assumptions about what information would be useful and what types of safeguards are necessary. For example, it was discussed how US surveillance law has traditionally established safeguards based on assumptions like: surveillance of data on a personal computer is more invasive than access to data stored in the cloud, real-time surveillance is more invasive than access to stored data, surveillance of newer communications is more invasive than surveillance of older communications, etc. These assumptions are no longer valid as information stored in the cloud, surveillance of older communications, and surveillance of stored data can be more invasive than access to newer communications, etc. It was also discussed that increasingly relevant legislation also contains provisions that have generic access standards, unclear authorization processes, and provide broad circumstances in which communication data and content can be accessed. The discussion also examined how governments are beginning to put in place mandatory and extensive data retention plans as tools of surveillance. These data retention mandates highlight the changing role of internet intermediaries including the fact that they are no longer independent from political pressure, and no longer have the ability to easily protect clients from unauthorized surveillance.

1]. EFF. Mandatory Data Retention: United States. Available at: https://www.eff.org/issues/mandatory-data-retention/us
[2].Espiner, T. Communications Data Bill: Need to Know. ZDNet. June 18th 2012. http://www.zdnet.com/communications-data-bill-need-to-know-3040155406/
[3]. Perlroth, M. Software Meant to Fight Crime is Used to Spy on Dissidents. The New York Times. August 30th 2012. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/technology/finspy-software-is-tracking-political-dissidents.html?_r=0
[4]. Wawro, A. What is Deep Packet Inspection?. PCWorld. February 1st 2012. Available at: http://www.pcworld.com/article/249137/what_is_deep_packet_inspection_.html
[5]. Geere, D. How deep packet inspection works. Wired. April 27th 2012. Available at: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-04/27/how-deep-packet-inspection-works
[6]. Kassner. M. Deep Packet Inspection: What You Need to Know. Tech Republic. July 27th 2008. Available at: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/networking/deep-packet-inspection-what-you-need-to-know/609
[7]. Anonyproz. How to Bypass Deep Packet Inspection Devices or ISPs Blocking Open VPN Traffic. Available at: http://www.anonyproz.com/supportsuite/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=138
[8].Chirgwin. R. Revealed: ITU's deep packet snooping standard leaks online: Boring tech doc or Internet eating monster. The Register. December 6th 2012. Available at: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/06/dpi_standard_leaked/

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/state-surveillance-human-rights-camp-summary

State Surveillance and Human Rights Camp

praskrishna — 2012-12-21T07:19:55Z

A two-day conference was held in Rio on December 13 and 14 at Sheraton Rio Hotel & Resort. Elonnai Hickok participated in the event and made a presentation on MLATS and International Cooperation for Law Enforcement Purposes.

Click here to see the Wiki page of the event. See Elonnai's presentation here [PDF, 313 Kb].

DAY 1: Mapping Out Government Surveillance Problems

8:30 - 9:00 Registration

9:00 - 9:10 Welcome/Introduction

Katitza Rodriguez, Electronic Frontier Foundation [Peru, ES]

Simultaneous interpretation from Spanish to English and Portuguese.

Plenary: Kinds of Data, Ways of Getting It

09:10 - 10:30

Chair: Enrique Chaparro, Fundacion Via Libre [Argentina, ES]

Metadata, online identifiers, and technologies of surveillance

Seth Schoen, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN]

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese.

Surveillance is getting easier and cheaper for many reasons, not least because people are using electronic communications more than ever before, and there are so many facts out there to be noticed about the ways devices are talking to each other.
I will talk about the kinds of things that refer to people and their devices, with a particular focus on telecommunications metadata and transactional records that are described as "non-content" and may receive lower levels of legal protection. I'll discuss who is in a position to record this information, some of the things that can be learned from it, and why traffic analysis is powerful and difficult to defend against.
I'll try to explain concepts like MAC address, IP address, account name and number, telephone number, IMEI, IMSI, transient identifiers, log files, transactional records, locational privacy, and associational privacy.

How law enforcement agencies use cell phone location tracking technology in criminal cases

Hanni Fakhoury, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN]

With the rise of smartphones, the U.S. government's use of cell site location data to pinpoint our exact location has grown more widespread (and precise) over time. For years, U.S. courts permitted the government to get this location data without a search warrant under a tortured interpretation of federal electronic privacy statutes and an even more alarming constitutional argument: that we don't have any privacy in data we turn over to third parties, like cell phone companies. This talk will review what location data is and why the police want it, how they can get it under U.S. law, and legal and practical steps that need to be taken to safeguard our privacy.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese.

Deep packet inspection: What it is, how it works, and how it is used for surveillance

Chris Parsons, Doctoral Candidate, University of Victoria [Canada, EN]

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese.

We are in the midst of a standardization revolution, a mass translation of discordant analogue signal types to interoperable digital transmission standards. All this digitized consumer traffic passes through the gateways of Internet Service Providers’ (ISPs). ISPs function as communicative bottlenecks, ideally positioning them to monitor, mine, and modify data using the Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) appliances situated within their networks. Some uses of these appliances could reshape the conditions of communication in democracies, blocking or modifying data transmissions in near real time.
In this presentation I discuss the technical capabilities of deep packet inspection and its significance for increased private and public surveillance capabilities. Drawing from case material from academic and advocacy work, I identify how the technology has been used for ISP-level surveillance, for copyright purposes, for national security purposes, and for advertising purposes. Moreover, I address how advocates in differing nations have opposed various uses of the technology, why they have done so, and conditions that facilitate domestic resistance to deep packet inspections' uses.

Advances in online spying: Commercial surveillance software, targeted hacking and beyond

Morgan Marquis-Boire, Google [New Zealand, EN]

Eva Galperin, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN]

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese.

Against an increasingly security-aware online community, the traditional tools of blocking, filtering, and wiretapping have become less effective. Nervous regimes turn to the largely unregulated $5 billion a year industry in Internet surveillance tools.
Once the realm of the black market and intelligence agencies, the latest computer spyware is now sold at trade shows for dictator pocket change.
This talk will detail the cat and mouse game between authoritarian regimes and dissidents, as well as ongoing efforts to map out the relationship between surveillance software companies and governments.

10:30 - 10:40 Coffee Break

Workshops: Round I

10:40 - 11:50

Format: Interactive sessions with active participat0ion from the audience.

Workshop 1: Mobile privacy threats

This workshop addresses the ways governments are tracking mobile devices’ location and use, and why it’s been harder to protect communications privacy on mobile devices than on PCs.

Facilitators:
Hanni Fakhoury, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN]
Seth Schoen, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN/PT]

Rapporteur:
Enrique Chaparro, Fundación Vía Libre [Argentina, EN/ES]

Workshop 2: Training activists about state surveillance capabilities

In this workshop we’ll talk about some of new surveillance technologies that states are deploying, and the tactics that are used to legitimize the surveillance.
Going beyond just ‘what is used and how’, we speak to some political tactics that advocates have used to resist these tools on practical and principled levels, some of the conditions that contribute to successes, and ways of mobilizing effective strategies against expansions of state surveillance.

Facilitator:
Chris Parsons, University of Victoria [Canada, EN]

Rapporteur:
Katarzyna Szymielewicz, European Digital Rights [Poland, EN]

Workshop 3: Tactics for opposing state sponsored malware and surveillance

This workshop will review the different tactics government and non-government actors have employed to stop authoritarian regimes from making use of surveillance technology built in the United States and Europe to spy on their citizens.
We will discuss corporate responsibility, export controls, as well as the role of security research and user education campaigns. The workshop will end with a brainstorm of at least one concrete action each workshop attendee can take.

Facilitators:

Eva Galperin, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN]
Morgan Marquis-Boire [New Zealand, EN]

Rapporteur:
Silvio Rhatto, Sarava Group [Brazil, PT]

Reporting Back Session

11:50 - 12:40 Chair:

Katitza Rodriguez, Electronic Frontier Foundation [Peru, ES]

Rapporteurs:
Enrique Chaparro, Fundación Vía Libre [Argentina, EN/ES]
Katarzyna Szymielewicz, European Digital Rights [Poland, EN]

Report: Training Activists about State Surveillance Capabilities

Silvio Rhatto, Sarava Group [Brazil, PT]

Format: Each rapporteur has 10 minutes to report back about the results of their workshop discussion and 20 minutes to answer questions.

12:40 - 2:00 Lunch

Legal and Policy Plenary: Government Access to People’s Data

2:00 - 3:20

Chair: Pedro Paranaguá, Advisor for Internet Policy to the Workers’ Party in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies [Brazil, PT/EN]

Different data, different rules? How the law has assigned varying levels of privacy protection to different categories of personal information

Kevin Bankston, Center for Democracy and Technology [United States, EN]

Using the example of US law, this presentation will map the different legal protections that have traditionally been applied to different types surveillance of different types of data, and consider how to redraw that map in light of new technologies.
Speaking generally, US surveillance law has been written based on the assumptions that: (1) surveillance of data on your computer is more invasive than access to your data in the cloud;(2) real-time surveillance is more invasive than access to stored data; (3) surveillance of the content of communications is more invasive than surveillance of non-content meta-data; (4) surveillance of newer communications is more invasive than surveillance of older communications.
These assumptions have long defined which types of surveillance are most strongly regulated against and which types of data are most strongly protected by law. Changing technology has made these assumptions about invasiveness and privacy increasingly obsolete, assuming that they ever made sense at all. But if these distinctions are outdated, what if any legal distinctions between different types of surveillance or data should replace them? How, if at all, can the law sensibly distinguish between personal communications and communications data in which we have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and that which we do not?

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese.

Internet companies as an agent of the state & european mandatory telecommunications data retention

Katarzyna Szymielewicz, European Digital Rights [Poland, EN]

In this short presentation I will introduce European (i.e. based on EU legislation) regime of mandatory retention of telecommunication data for law enforcement purposes, explaining its political context, implementation and negative impact on human rights standards (not just privacy-related!).
Using case studies of Poland and Germany I will present two strikingly different approaches to storing telecommunication data and law enforcement, thus questioning the necessity and proportionality of this controversial measure. I will also touch briefly on pending political developments (including the revision of the Data Retention Directive and the reform of data protection law in the EU), explaining what the stakes are, what European civil society organisations are fighting for and why it is such an important fight. Finally, I will explain how the debate about mandatory data retention feeds into a broader discussion about the role of Internet intermediaries, including both their independence from political pressure and protection of their clients from surveillance executed by “private police.”

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese.

Crossborder access to citizen's data and cloud computing in the investigation of criminal cases: Regional trends

Marcos Salt, profesor de derecho penal y procesal penal de la universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA) [Argentina, ES]

During the brief presentation, I will present practical examples of the problems caused by the application by analogy of the rules on physical evidence to obtain digital evidence.
I try to show that this trend is inconvenient to both for efficiency in the investigation of crimes by the state as to the validity of individual rights. I will place special reference to cross-border access to citizen's data in the cloud.

Simultaneous interpretation from Spanish to English and Portuguese.

Background on lawful interception mandates and government access to encryption keys

Seth Schoen, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN]

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese.

In this session, I'll discuss some of the history of fights over government surveillance powers and government access in the United States, starting in the early 1990s and continuing to the present day. These issues have centered on three main themes: restrictions on cryptography and privacy tools, obligations for communications intermediaries to acquire and implement surveillance capabilities, and mandatory retention of telecommunications data.
One interesting point is that many of the same themes keep recurring: the powers that the government is seeking today are often similar to those it sought two decades ago.
Another interesting point is that the government has not always been successful in expanding its surveillance powers. Many of its proposals never became law and there are still plenty of issues left to fight over. But governments around the world are continuing to having a major effect on the design of technology, getting wiretapping interfaces and backdoors added to communications systems and discouraging deployments of strong encryption.

MLATS and International Cooperation for Law Enforcement Purposes

Elonnai Hickok, Center for Internet & Society India [India, EN]

In this session I will be looking at the challenges, requisite safeguards, and possible solutions in the context of international cooperation for fighting crime. In doing so I will look closely at the proposed principle of safeguards for international cooperation.
The objective of this session will be to explore ways of improving MLATS and international law enforcement cooperation in order to ensure that basic safeguards can be built into the process of international cooperation.

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese.

Format: 10-15 minutes for each five speakers to introduce legal issues and 20 minutes of discussions

3:10 - 3:20 Coffee Break

Workshops: Round II

3:20 - 4:30

Workshop 1: Electronic surveillance demonstrations

In this workshop, we'll take a look at a few electronic surveillance devices (including an ordinary laptop) and look at some of what they can intercept. Technological infrastructure permitting, we may have a live demonstration of intercepting or modifying users' Internet communications.
We'll also consider low-cost surveillance techniques and discuss what kinds of demonstrations have the most pedagogical value for making users aware of particular threats.

Facilitator:
Seth Schoen, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN]

Rapporteur:
Eva Galperin, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN/ES/PT]

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese.

Workshop 2: Legal framework regarding compelled disclosure of communications, subscriber information, and cryptographic keys

In this workshop we will cover various examples of compelled disclosure of private information (from subscriber information and content of communication to cryptographic keys) in the context of law enforcement, focusing on their legal aspects. We will briefly present various legal frameworks, discussing both the examples of legal safeguards (“good practices”) and their shortcomings that allow for government surveillance.
We will also look at various human rights implications of these measures and (potential / existing) role of private companies from the perspective of their compliance with such measures (incl. when requested by non-democratic regimes).

Facilitators:
Katarzyna Szymielewicz, European Digital Rights [Poland, EN]
Elonnai Hickok, Center for Internet & Society India [India, EN]

Rapporteur:
Hanni Fakhoury, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN]

Workshop 3: What data is most private? What surveillance is most invasive? How if at all should laws treat them differently?

This workshop will build on the discussion that began in the law & policy plenary, discussing how certain surveillance laws have applied different legal protections to different types of data and surveillance, and questioning whether such distinctions make sense in light of new technology.
The workshop will address that question from legal, personal, and political perspectives. Participants will share with each other details of how the laws in their countries treat different types of data and different types of surveillance, to facilitate shared understanding of the existing legal frameworks and to identify existing gaps and discrepancies in current legal protections.
Based on their own personal experiences as Internet users and as advocates, participants will then discuss what data in their lives they consider most private and what types of surveillance they find most invasive, and reflect on how if at all the law should distinguish between them. Finally, participants will discuss the politics of these different frameworks: both how gaps and weaknesses in existing frameworks threaten the ability of advocates to politically organize in the face of government surveillance, and how we can best work through the political process and change those frameworks to better reflect current technology and human rights norms.

Facilitators:
Kevin Bankston, Center for Democracy and Technology [United States, EN]
Danilo Doneda, Fundação Getúlio Vargas [Brazil, PT/EN]

Rapporteur:
Beatriz Busaniche, Fundación Vía Libre [Argentina, ES]

Reporting Back Session & Closing Meeting Day 1

4:30 - 5:20

Chair:
Katitza Rodriguez, Electronic Frontier Foundation [Peru, ES]

Rapporteurs:
Eva Galperin, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN/ES/PT]

Report: Demonstrating Surveillance

Hanni Fakhoury, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN]

Report: Compelled Disclosure of Communications, Subscriber Information & Cryptographic Keys

Beatriz Busaniche, Fundación Vía Libre [Argentina, ES]

Report: What Data is Most Private? What Surveillance is Most Invasive? Should Laws Treat Different Data Differently?

8:30 pm Dinner

DAY 2: Challenges and Mapping Out Possible Solutions
8:55 - 9:00 Welcome

Plenary: Surveillance in Latin America
9:00 - 10:20

Chair: Camila Marques, Lawyer, ARTIGO 19 [Brazil, PT]

Surveillance in Colombia
Carlos Eduardo Huertas, Semana [Colombia, ES]

Surveillance in Cuba
“Mario Hernandez” [Cuba, ES]

Surveillance in the Northern Triangle
Renata Avila, Global Voices [Guatemala, ES]

Surveillance in Peru
Yonsi Solis, Global Voices [Peru, ES]

Surveillance in Mexico
Caracol Azul, [Mexico, ES]
This session will have simultaneous interpretation from Spanish to English and Portuguese

Keynote: Challenges Posed By Electronic Surveillance

10:20 - 10:40
Frank La Rue, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression [Guatemala, ES]
Increasing pressure (legal and political) on private parties to help carry out the state’s surveillance mandate.

Simultaneous interpretation from Spanish to English and Portuguese

10:40 - 11:00 Coffee Break

Plenary: International Surveillance & Human Rights Principles: Challenges and Opportunities in Latin America

11:00 - 11:50

Chair: Carly Nyst, Privacy International [Australia/UK, EN]
Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese.

Explanation of the Principles: Background, purpose, need, challenges and opportunities

Chilean and Latin American perspectives

Alberto Cerda, Derechos Digitales [Chile, ES]
Simultaneous interpretation from Spanish to English and Portuguese

Expansion of Brazilian law enforcement powers to access users’ digital information

Pablo Ortellado, GPOPAI [Brasil, PT/EN]
Simultaneous interpretation from Portuguese to Spanish and English

Surveillance and regional human rights standards

Juan Camilo Rivera, Comisión Colombiana de Juristas [Colombia, ES]
Simultaneous interpretation from Spanish to English and Portuguese

Workshops: Round III

11:50 - 1:00

Workshop 1: International surveillance and human rights principles: Perspectives from Latin America

Facilitator:
Alberto Cerda, Derechos Digitales [ES] & Carly Nyst, Privacy International [UK, EN]

Rapporteur:
Juan Camilo Rivera, Comisión Colombiana de Juristas [Colombia, ES]

Workshop 2: Technical community activism
What is the technology community doing to defend privacy?

Facilitators:

Enrique Chaparro, Fundación Vía Libre [Argentina, ES ]
João Carlos Caribé, Movimento Mega (aka Mega Não) [Brazil, PT/EN]

Rapporteur:
Eva Galperin, Electronic Frontier Foundation [USA, EN]

Plenary: Hands-on Activism

2:40 - 3:50 p.m.

Chair: Rebecca Bowe, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN]

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese.

What is meant by Hands-On Activism? As you’ll learn from our panelists, there are many strategies that can be utilized to push back against a surveillance practice or proposal. We’ll cover the most effective ways to obtain public records; strategies for generating interest in digital rights issues; fresh and extraordinary approaches to creative campaigning, and tactics used by an international nonprofit to tackle privacy issues with online campaigns.

Raising digital awareness in Peru

Marco Sifuentes, Instituto Prensa y Sociedad [Peru, ES]

Peru has a very active and influential online community. It can affect the course of elections, prove the president wrong and stop law projects. It can work very well on "real world" matters. But when it comes to online issues, it's been hard to raise awareness on the Peruvian general public and even on the media. What went wrong? However, in the past year, some digital topics have received a lot of coverage. Some not. What changed? I’ll share Peru's experience in the hope that every participant can compare it with his or her own country's situation.

Online organizing for human rights

Fabiola Carrion, Access [Peru, ES/EN]

A recent addition to the Access Team, Fabiola will begin her presentation by talking about her own experiences in organizing and advocacy, arguing that the struggle for human rights is increasingly moving online. She will discuss new tools of organizing, and the importance of combining technology, policy, and grassroots advocacy tactics to affect holistic change in internet policy debates. Her presentation will include a series of short case studies from around the world where Access, along with its various allies, have successfully campaigned for a free and open internet. Her presentation will conclude with a discussion of lessons learned and best practices for online organizing, particularly around issues of surveillance and due process.

Surveillance and secrecy: Strategy and tactics - Using the law to uncover abuse of LEAs’ surveillance powers

Geoff King, Lawyer [United States, EN]

Open government laws, though riddled with exemptions, are powerful tools for shedding light on the governmental operations. One way in which these laws can be used is to uncover the existence of law enforcement surveillance, as well details about the tools used to achieve such surveillance. This portion of the presentation will explore how journalists and activists can employ successful transparency strategies in the face of various procedural pitfalls. It will also give concrete examples of how such strategies have paid off in the recent past.
Presentation Materials

Creative campaigning: tactical media mashup
Vladan Joler, Share Foundation [Serbia, EN]

Explore the beautiful world of tactical media as a creative tool for getting your message out there.
From creative campaigning during Serbian protests in the 90s to “lo fi” media interventions, protests inside computer games, media pranks and parasite media tactics to social media bots and Twitter bombs.
Presentation Materials

Simultaneous interpretation from English to Spanish and Portuguese Return to Top

3:50 - 4:10 Coffee Break

Workshops: Round IV

4:10 - 5:10

Workshop 1: What the international surveillance and human rights principles are asking the governments to do?

This session will be used to call out exactly what the International Surveillance and Human Rights Principles are asking governments to change or legislative/policy actions they are asking governments to take. This will hopefully be useful in helping individuals and organizations understand what aspects to highlight and push when proposing the principles and why.

Facilitators:

Katitza Rodriguez, Electronic Frontier Foundation [Peru, ES]
Elonnai Hickok, Center for Internet & Society India [India, EN]

Rapporteur:
Graciela Selaimen, NUPEF [Brasil, EN/ES/PT]

Workshop 2: Creative campaigning: tactical media mashup & anti-surveillance campaigns

What are activists around the world doing to counter surveillance proposals and practices? And what could they be doing, with just a little more knowledge and inspiration? At this session, workshop facilitators will share stories about successful campaigns launched around the world in response to government surveillance. How did a humorous Twitter hashtag about a proponent of surveillance legislation rise to “trending” status on Twitter? How did a small team of digital rights activists in Argentina manage to position themselves as one of the most trusted media sources on issues relating to privacy in the digital realm? How did a small group of activists manage to reach biggest world media and how are activists creating their own media? We’ll then open it up for a group discussion in which participants can share their own stories of effective tactics from around the world, and explore ideas for collaborating and harnessing the knowledge gleaned from our collective experiences.

Facilitators:

Rebecca Bowe, Electronic Frontier Foundation [United States, EN]
Vladan Joler, Share Foundation [Serbia, EN]

Rapporteur:
Hisham Almiraat, Global Voices Advocacy [Morocco, EN]

Reporting Back Session & Closing Remarks

5:10 - 6:00

Chair:
Katitza Rodriguez, Electronic Frontier Foundation [Peru, ES]

Rapporteurs:
Graciela Selaimen, NUPEF [Brasil, EN/ES/PT]

Renzo Lavin, Asociación Civil por la Igualdad y la Justicia [Argentina, ES]
Hisham Almiraat, Global Voices Advocacy [Morocco, EN]

Each breakout session will have one designated rapporteur, one note-taker, and a module to work around.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/state-surveillance-and-human-rights-camp

State of Openness in India's E-Governance Applications

Upasana Hembram — 2025-03-26T02:01:18Z

Open source software (OSS), also commonly known as free and open source software (FOSS) or free libre open source software (FLOSS), is software that is made available with its source code. It is licensed liberally, granting users access to study, use, modify, improve, or redistribute it. This work was sponsored by Mozilla Foundation.

In this context, the term ‘open’ refers to the source code being made available without having to pay royalties or licensing fees, while the term ‘free’ refers to the freedom to copy and use the software rather than being ‘free of cost’. The two organisations that are the self-appointed custodians of these definitions are the Free Software Foundation (FSF)2 and the Open Software Initiative (OSI).3 While the two organisations and the two terms resulted from different philosophies and represent different methodologies, the FSF and OSI acknowledge that for all practical purposes, “they both refer to essentially the same thing”4; “however, the differences in extension of the category are small: nearly all free software is open source, and nearly all open source software is free.

Click to download the research paper authored by Upasana Hembram and reviewed by Divyansha Sehgal. Shared under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/state-of-openness-in-indias-e-governance-applications

State of Digital Rights in India (Delhi, March 24)

Japreet Grewal and Sumandro Chattapadhyay — 2017-03-27T13:21:20Z

The Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi and the Internet Freedom Foundation, in association with Access Now, are hosting a discussion on The State of Digital Rights in India on March 24, 2017 (Friday) from 6.00 pm onwards at Lecture Room-I, India International Centre- Annexe, New Delhi. Japreet Grewal and Sumandro Chattapadhyay will participate in the panel discussions.

Registration: Eventbrite

March 24, 2017 marks the two year anniversary of the landmark Shreya Singhal judgment. This was a very significant ruling on freedom of speech and expression and occupies an important place in the Supreme Court’s discourse on civil liberties. The judgment traces out the contours of free speech on the Internet in India and unequivocally holds that the right to freedom of expression provided under Article 19(1)(a) applies to speech over the Internet, making it clear that this is a medium-neutral right.

The event aims to shed some light on this key judgment and discuss ongoing discussions regarding our civil liberties and freedoms online before courts and the Parliament. We would also like to take this opportunity to discuss some of the other pressing issues like Network Neutrality, Internet shutdowns, Privacy and User Security which need immediate attention and engagement of our democratic institutions. We hope to formulate effective strategies which will further shape the legal and policy framework in India, and facilitate better collaborative efforts between stakeholders.

We hope to bring together everyone who contributed to the judgment, and those who do work connected with it, so that we may build on it to seek a better legal framework to protect online speech and to discuss the threats surrounding digital rights and how best build on the foundations of the judgment.

We would be grateful if you could take out some time on Friday evening (6PM) and be a part of this important discussion. The discussion will be followed by dinner and an Open Bar for an Open Internet, which will start from 9.00 pm at the Annexe Court in the India International Centre - Annexe. In case you are unable to attend the seminar, please do join us for dinner!

Featuring:

A keynote address on our online freedoms and policymaking, by Shri Tathagata Satpathy (Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha)
A legal panel analysing the legacy of the Shreya Singhal v. Union of India judgment
Beyond Shreya Singhal: A conversation with women on the future of our digital rights
Briefings on the state of digital rights in our courts and in Parliament
A conversation on the path ahead for our civil liberties and digital rights community

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/state-of-digital-rights-in-india-delhi-march-24

Start-up India turns the heat on Facebook Free Basics

praskrishna — 2015-12-29T15:54:30Z

Facebook launched its "Save Free Basics" campaign last week, asking users to support "digital equality" in India.

The article by Anita Babu was published in Business Standard on December 22, 2015. Pranesh Prakash gave inputs.

Nearly a week after Facebook launched its controversial "Save Free Basics" campaign in India, the net neutrality debate has come to the fore again. This time around, India's star internet entrepreneurs such as Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and chief executive of Paytm, and Dippak Khurana of Vserv have joined the crusade for free internet.

"Oh my fellow Indians, either choose this and do a jihad for independent internet later or pick net neutrality today," Sharma of Paytm, India's largest digital wallet, tweeted on Tuesday. "Digital world war heads! We have to load http://www.savetheinternet.in for #NetNeutrality," said Sharma in another tweet. Savetheinternet.in, a volunteer group, has urged people to lend their support for an unfettered internet in India.

Facebook launched its "Save Free Basics" campaign last week, asking users to support "digital equality" in India, in response to a paper by the telecom regulator which is seeking comments on differential pricing practices like Airtel Zero of Facebook's Free Basics, which was earlier called Internet.org.

Facebook launched a print and digital media campaign for a "connected India" asking users to give a missed call, automatically sending a message to the regulator in support of Free Basics.

Facebook has also been asking its users to send an e-mail to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) supporting "essential internet for all". The social network claims to have gained support from 3.2 million of its 130 million users in India.

On Tuesday, the social media giant earned flak for soliciting support from international users for the campaign. Later, Facebook withdrew the campaign outside India claiming it was an "accident".

However, some net neutrality volunteers said that many of Facebook's 3.2 million supporters for Free Basics were non-Indians.

Activists and tech leaders are calling the Facebook campaign "misleading" and "destructive".

"People are being tricked into supporting Free Basics under the guise of digital equality," wrote Amol Malviya, former chief technology officer at Flipkart, India's largest e-commerce firm, on his blog. "Notice the language on the page? It makes any critic of Free Basics appear to be an enemy of digital equality. People will listen to the critics' arguments much lesser when there's a question mark on their intent."

Nikhil Pahwa, editor and publisher of MediaNama, said India should question the intent of Facebook and its campaign. "There is misrepresentation in the language they have used. It makes people assume that we can't have universal internet access without net-neutrality violating services such as Free Basics. It is important for a country to take note of how much power a platform with as much reach as Facebook has to influence an important government process," said Pahwa, who led a fight against TRAI's move to allow telecom firms charge for internet services like WhatsApp and Hike.

The basic premise of net neutrality is that of freedom - an open internet that protects and enables free communication. Anything that takes away this freedom violates the fundamentals of free Internet. "Facebook's Free Basics is neither free nor basic - it is a cleverly disguised way of walling a garden, and hardly the philanthropic initiative that it is marketed to be," said Khurana of Vserv. He urged internet users to uninstall the Facebook App from their mobile phones in protest.

Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, said, "Facebook, a foreign company, is allowed to campaign with impunity, but NGOs receiving funding from foreign trusts are subject to all manners of restrictions and may not campaign in India."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-anita-babu-december-23-2015-start-up-india-turns-the-heat-on-facebook-free-basics

Standard-Essential-Patents-on-Low-Cost-Mobile-Phones-in-India-A-Case-to-Strengthen-Competition-Regulation.pdf

praskrishna — 2016-02-25T02:31:25Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/Standard-Essential-Patents-on-Low-Cost-Mobile-Phones-in-India-A-Case-to-Strengthen-Competition-Regulation.pdf

Standard Essential Patents on Low-Cost Mobile Phones in India: A Case to Strengthen Competition Regulation?

nehaa — 2016-04-24T04:42:52Z

The realization of the promise of the sub hundred dollar mobile device as a facilitator of access to knowledge is contingent inter alia on its availability in the market place. In turn, the market availability of the sub hundred dollar mobile device is influenced by the existence of an enabling environment for producers to produce, and consumers to consume. From a regulatory perspective, the enabling environment itself is a function of existing laws and policies, and the ‘developmental effects’ of certain laws and policies (Saraswati, 2012).

This article seeks to examine one such legal and policy lever and the role of a regulator in the development of an enabling environment for access to sub hundred dollar mobile devices. This paper is founded on four assumptions: first, that access to sub hundred dollar mobile devices is influenced by their price; second, that the question of access necessitates conversation between the intellectual property regime and several other actors, sites and tools; third, that one of the fundamental goals of regulatory reform is the creation of a ‘stable, open and future- proof environment’ (Guermazi and Satola, 2005) that encourages access to these devices; and fourth, that there exist public law implications of intellectual property that justify the involvement of State actors and regulators in matters that may arise out of private transactions.

This article will examine whether there is a role to be played by competition law in this narrative of innovation, intellectual property and access to sub hundred dollar mobile devices. In light of increasing litigation around standard essential patents, and the inability of FRAND and International Standard Setting Organizations to find a comprehensive solution, this paper will question the efficacy of competition law as an ex post solution to a problem that might be better addressed by ex ante regulation from a specialized body.

In an attempt to address these questions, this article will examine the role of the Competition Commission of India and the Indian Judiciary. Orders of the Competition Commission will be studied from its inception till March, 2015, in order to draw conclusions about the role that the Commission identifies for itself and the nature of disputes it adjudicates. This article will also examine the role of similarly placed institutions in the United States of America as well as some member states of the European Union.

It will be argued that while Competition Law might address some of the issues arising out of litigation around standard essential patents, and might be a tool to increase access to sub hundred dollar mobile devices, its efficacy as a long term solution in light of its nature as an ex post solution, is questionable. Consequently, it might be prudent to have a conversation leaning towards exante regulation of the market place by a specialized regulator.

The paper was published by Socio Legal Review (National Law School of India University). Download the PDF here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/the-socio-legal-review-nehaa-chaudhari-standard-essential-patent-on-low-cost-mobile-phones-in-india

Stand up for Digital Rights

elonnai — 2016-06-13T15:30:12Z

The Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) invites you to a discussion on a set of recommendations for Ethical Tech, a report on human rights and private online intermediaries which describes key areas where such actors have responsibilities. The event will be held at CIS office in Bangalore on June 15, 2016 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

The discussion intends to launch a report on human rights and private online intermediaries, which describes key areas where such actors have responsibilities and provides a detailed set of recommendations for Ethical Tech. This work is the culmination of a year long research project led by the Centre for Law and Democracy (CLD), in collaboration with the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI), the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Open Net Korea, the Center for Studies on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information at the University of Palermo (CELE) and researchers with the University of Ottawa and the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. The key themes for discussion would include:

General Human Rights Responsibilities and Private Online Intermediaries
Expanding Access
Net Neutrality
Content Moderation
Privacy
Transparency and Informed Consent
Responding to State Interferences

We look forward to meeting you and making this forum for knowledge exchange a success.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/stand-up-for-digital-rights