Centre for Internet and Society

September 2017 Newsletter

Admin — 2017-11-21T15:19:25Z

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
CIS filed a request under the Right to Information Act in March 2016 as part of research for the paper: Patent Working Requirements and Complex Products: An Empirical Assessment of India's Form 27 Practice and Compliance (July 2017). Rohini Lakshané has captured the developments in a blog post. Last month’s judgment by the nine judge referral bench was an emphatic endorsement of the the constitutional right to privacy. Amber Sinha has dissected the various aspects of the right to privacy as put forth by the nine judge constitutional bench in the Puttaswamy matter. The papers on fundamental right to privacy can be accessed here. With offline as the theme of the third Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC18), CIS has invited teams of two or more members to submit sessions proposals by Sunday, October 22, 2017. The conference is expected to be held in Himachal Pradesh during February 22-24, 2018. The venue and dates will be confirmed soon. Anonymity-based internet apps like Sarahah may not be as vicious for those surrounded by the comfort of social status. If your experience of Sarahah has been positive, it might be good to reflect on your own cultural and social capital, wrote Nishant Shah in an article in the Indian Express, dated September 10, 2017.

CIS in the news:

Privacy is now a right in India. Here's what that means for the tech industry (Rishi Iyengar; CNN Tech; August 29, 2017).
Russian social network VKontakte temporarily blocked in India for Blue Whale threat (Kim Arora; The Times of India; September 12, 2017).

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

►Pervasive Technologies

RTI request to Indian Patents Office for Form 27 (Statement of Working of patents), March 2016 (Rohini Lakshané; September 9, 2017).
RTI request to Indian Patents Office for Form 27 (Statement of Working of patents), 2015 (Rohini Lakshané; September 9, 2017).

►Openness

Our work in the Openness programme focuses on open data, especially open government data, open access, open education resources, open knowledge in Indic languages, open media, and open technologies and standards - hardware and software. We approach openness as a cross-cutting principle for knowledge production and distribution, and not as a thing-in-itself.

Participation in Event

Praja - Enhancing Democracy Through Access to Open Data: What Are the Roles of Government and Civil Society? (Organized by Praja; September 8, 2017; New Delhi). Sumandro Chattapadhyay was a speaker.

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

►Privacy

Blog Entries

Rethinking National Privacy Principles: Evaluating Principles for India's Proposed Data Protection Law (Amber Sinha; September 11, 2017).
The Fundamental Right to Privacy: An Analysis (Amber Sinha; September 27, 2017).

►Big Data

Upcoming Event

Emerging Issues in the Internet of Things (CIS, Bangalore; October 23, 2017). Andrew Rens will give a talk on the research that he is doing at the Internet Governance Lab.

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

Article

Revamp Telecom Sector & Revive The Economy (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; September 7, 2017).

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

Article

Digital native: What’s in a name? Privilege (Indian Express, September 10, 2017).

Announcement

Internet Researchers' Conference 2018 (IRC18): Offline - Call for Session (P.P. Sneha; September 20, 2017). Teams of two or more members to submit sessions proposals by Sunday, October 22, 2017.

Blog Entry

The Digital Humanities from Father Busa to Edward Snowden (P.P. Sneha; September 4, 2017).

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About CIS
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The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) is a non-profit organisation that undertakes interdisciplinary research on internet and digital technologies from policy and academic perspectives. The areas of focus include digital accessibility for persons with disabilities, access to knowledge, intellectual property rights, openness (including open data, free and open source software, open standards, open access, open educational resources, and open video), internet governance, telecommunication reform, digital privacy, and cyber-security. The academic research at CIS seeks to understand the reconfigurations of social and cultural processes and structures as mediated through the internet and digital media technologies.

► Follow us elsewhere

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

► Support Us

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

► Request for Collaboration

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

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

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/september-2017-newsletter

Internet Researchers' Conference 2018 (IRC18): Offline - Call for Sessions

sneha-pp — 2017-11-29T12:30:13Z

Does being offline necessarily mean being disconnected? Beyond anxieties such as FOMO, being offline is also seen as disengagement from a certain milieu of the digital (read: capital), an impediment to the way life is organised by and around technologies in general. However, being offline is not the exception, as examples of internet shutdown and acts on online censorship illustrate the persistence and often alarming regularity of the offline even for the ‘connected’ sections of the population. The *offline* is the theme of the third Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC18). We invite teams of two or more members to submit sessions proposals by Sunday, November 19 (final deadline). The session selection process is described below. The Conference will be hosted by the Sambhaavnaa Institute of Public Policy and Politics (Kandbari, Palampur, Himachal Pradesh) on February 22-24, 2018.

IRC18: Offline

Call for Sessions

Proposed Sessions (Conference Website)

Sambhaavnaa Institute of Public Policy and Politics (External Link)

IRC18: Offline

State and commercial providers of internet and telecommunication services work in tandem to produce both the “online” and the “offline” - through content censorship, internet regulation, generalised service provision failures, and so on. Further, efforts to prioritise the use of digital technologies for financial transactions, especially since demonetisation, has led to a not-so-subtle equalisation of the ‘online economy’ with the ‘formal economy’; thus recognising the offline as the zones of informality, corruption, and piracy. This contributes to the offline becoming invisible, and in many cases, illegal, rather than being recognised as a condition that necessarily informs what it means to be digital.

Who is offline, and is it a choice? The global project of bringing people online has spurred several commendable initiatives in expanding access to digital devices, networks, and content, and often contentious ones such as Free Basics / internet.org, which illustrate the intersectionalities of scale, privilege, and rights that we need to be mindful of when we imagine the offline. Further, the experience of the internet, for a large section of people is often mediated through prior and ongoing experiences of traditional media, and through cultural metaphors and cognitive frames that transcend more practical registers such as consumption and facilitation. How do we approach, study, and represent this disembodied internet – devoid of its hypertext, platforms, devices, it's nuts and bolts, but still tangible through engagement in myriad, personal and often indiscernible ways.

For the third edition of the Internet Researchers’ Conference (IRC18), we invite participants to critically discuss the offline. We invite sessions that present or propose academic, applied, creative, or technical works that explore social, economic, cultural, political, infrastructural, or aesthetic dimensions of the offline.

For example, the sessions may explore one or more of the following themes:

Geographies of internet access: Infrastructural, socio-political, and discursive forces and contradictions
Terms, objects, metaphors, and events of the internet and their offline remediation and circulation
Minimal computing, maker cultures, and digital collaboration and creativity in the offline
Offline economic cultures and transition towards less-cash economy
Offline as democratic choice: the right to offline lives in the context of global debates on privacy, surveillance, and data justice
Methodologies of studying the *offline* at the intersections of offline and online lives

Please note that the above are not sub-themes or tracks under which a session should be proposed, but are illustrations of possible session themes and concerns.

Call for Sessions

We invite teams of two or more members to propose sessions for IRC18. All sessions will be one and half hours long, and will be fully designed and facilitated by the team concerned, including moderation (if any). Please remember this when planning the session. Everything happening during the session, except for logistical support, will be led and managed by the session team.

The sessions are expected to drive conversations on the topic concerned. They may include presentation of research papers but this is not mandatory.

We look forward to sessions that involve collaborative work (either in groups or otherwise), including discussions, interactions, documentation, learning, and making, are most welcome.

We also look forward to sessions conducted in Indic languages. The proposing team, in such a case, should consider how participants who do not understand the language concerned may engage with the session. IRC organisers and other participants shall help facilitate these sessions, say by offering translation support.

The only eligibility criteria for proposing sessions are that they must be proposed by a team of at least two members, and that they must engage with the *offline*.

The deadline for submission of sessions proposals for IRC18 is Sunday, November 19 (final deadline).

To propose a session, please send the following documents (as attached text files) to raw@cis-india.org:

Title of the Session: The session should be named in the form of a hashtag (check the IRC17 selected sessions for example).
Context of the Session: This should be a 300 words note discussing the context, the motivations, and the expectations behind the proposed session.
Session Plan: This should describe the objectives of the session, what will be done and discussed during the session, and who among the people organising the session will be responsible for what. This note need not be more than 300 words long. If your session involves inviting others to present their work (say papers), then please provide a description and timeline of the process through which these people will be identified.
Session Team Details: Please share brief biographic notes of each member of the session team, and contact details.

There is no registration fee for the Conference, but participants are expected to pay for their own travel and accommodation (to be organised by CIS) expenses. Limited funding will be available to support travel and accommodation expenses of few participants who are unemployed or under-employed.

Session selection process:

November 19: Deadline of submission of session proposals.All submitted sessions will be posted on the CIS website, along with the names and details of the session team members.
November 20 - December 17: Open review period. All session teams, as well as other interested contributors, are invited to review and comment upon each other's submitted proposals and revise their own. Read the proposed sessions here: Conference Website.
December 18-31: The selection process takes place. All session teams will select 10 sessions to be included in the IRC18 programme. The votes will be anonymous, that is no session team will know which other sessions have voted for their session.
January 08: Announcement of selected sessions.
February 22-24: IRC18 at Sambhaavnaa Institute!

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/irc18-offline-call

Annual Report 2016-2017

Admin — 2017-09-20T01:43:30Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/annual-report-2016-2017

Annual Report 2015-2016

Admin — 2017-09-20T01:35:54Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/annual-report-2015-2016

Rethinking Privacy Principles

elonnai — 2017-09-11T02:17:02Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/rethinking-privacy-principles

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

sumandro — 2017-09-05T10:57:38Z

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

Details

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

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

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

Event Page: Facebook

Objectives

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

Outcomes

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

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

Sessions

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

Session I: Praja Foundation Website Launch

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

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

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

August 2017 Newsletter

Admin — 2017-10-09T14:48:24Z

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
Elonnai Hickok wrote a blog post which provided a high level comparison of the 2017 and 2015 DNA Profiling Bill - calling out positive changes, remaining issues, and missing provisions. Rohini Lakshane wrote a blog post on dataset for patent requirements and complex products. The dataset has been released under the Creative Commons-Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 License. A Marathi Wikipedia workshop was held in Sangli, Maharashtra. Subodh Kulkarni shared the developments in a blog post. In an emphatic endorsement of the right to privacy, a nine judge constitutional bench unanimously upheld a fundamental right to privacy. The events leading to this bench began during the hearings in the ongoing Aadhaar case, when in August 2015, Mukul Rohatgi, the then Attorney General stated that there is no constitutionally guaranteed right to privacy. CIS gave its statement on right to privacy judgment.

CIS in the news:

Privacy laws: Alternatives to consent (Livemint; August 1, 2017).
The rise of India’s typography community (Susanna Myrtle Lazarus; Hindu, August 4, 2017).
UNESCO Internet Universality Indicators consulted at the 8th Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (UNESCO, August 9, 2017).
Aadhaar may be made must for market investments: Good to curb laundering but what about data security? (Bindisha Sarang; August 10, 2017).
Privacy is now a right in India. Here's what that means for the tech industry (Rishi Iyengar, CNN Tech, August 29, 2017).

CIS members wrote the following articles

Aadhar: Privacy is not a unidimensional concept (Amber Sinha; Economic Times; July 23, 2017).
A New Telecom Policy that Works (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; August 2, 2017).
Should an Inability to Precisely Define Privacy Render It Untenable as a Right? (Amber Sinha; The Wire; August 2, 2017).
Here’s why we need a lot more discussion on India’s new DNA Profiling Bill (Elonnai Hickok; August 21, 2017).
Infographic: The Impending Right to Privacy Judgment (Amber Sinha and Pooja Saxena; The Wire; August 22, 2017).
Digital native: You are not alone (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; August 27, 2017).

►Pervasive Technologies

Dataset for "Patent Working Requirements and Complex Products: An Empirical Assessment of India's Form 27 Practice and Compliance" (Rohini Lakshané; August 17, 2017).

►Wikipedia

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

Blog Entries

Marathi Wikipedia Workshop in Sangli, Maharashtra (Subodh Kulkarni; August 1, 2017).
Wikipedia Workshop on Template Creation and Modification Conducted in Bengaluru (Tito Dutta; August 10, 2017).
Telugu Wikisource Workshop (Pavan Santhosh; August 15, 2017).

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Internet Governance
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►Privacy

Blog Entries

High Level Comparison and Analysis of the Use and Regulation of DNA Based Technology Bill 2017 (Elonnai Hickok; August 4, 2017).

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

Newspaper Column

A New Telecom Policy That Works (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; August 2, 2017).

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► Follow us elsewhere

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

► Support Us

► Request for Collaboration

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/august-2017-newsletter

Guest Blog: Retd. Col. Ashwin Baindur on Strategy, Wikimedia Strategy Salon, Vijayawada

manasarao — 2017-10-24T11:52:49Z

User:AshLin aka Col Ashwin Baindur (retd) gave a Plenary Speech(in absentia) on Strategy at the Wikimedia Movement Strategy Salon, held in Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh on 27 August 2017. It is reproduced here with permission:

Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests and my dear Wikimedia friends and colleagues,

I am deeply honoured to be asked to say the opening words for the Movement Strategy Salon being held today at Vijayawada. The problems of ill health prevent me from coming to be with you as I most dearly wish, but I do hope my few words and thoughts will make do instead. Let me introduce myself. I happen to be a retired army officer but I see myself as a citizen of the world, as a Wikipedian whose cherished dream is to make Jimmy Wales dream come true.

“Imagine a world where the sum of all knowledge is available to all mankind!”

The occasion for this conclave or salon is timely. The twenty first century paradigm of Open Culture, of sharing and collective intelligence are well established. Crowdsourcing, Wikipedia, Creative Commons, Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive and so many other important global resources are proof.

Education has received a huge fillip by the vastly increased amounts of data and knowledge on the Internet. Open sourcing has made its mark in the software side of the business world. Just as has open access publishing in Academia. Society as a whole has gained by all these manifestations of open culture.

And today, we are gathered here to begin thinking on the directions for the future of the Wikimedia movement in India.

What does this mean in our case? India is a country of many languages, dialects, people, communities, religions, tribes. Along with this are the collective efforts of 1.3 billion people to make a secular, democratic, economically strong nation. The ability to share learning, understanding, experiences are key to this process. And for this, collaboration is a vital necessity.

As of now the Wikimedia effort in India consists of a potpourri of projects, encyclopedia, quote, text repository and the use of Wikimedia Commons as a media repository. We have to grow this into a large, useful and versatile resource in each of our Indic languages.

The Wikimedians, a small band of volunteers to date, must take along the entire society of India so that we have betterment as a nation by first creating and using these resources. And today’s conclave with kindred souls from society, academia, industry.. is a beginning in this regard.

Now we are here to think what directions this Movement must take. I am envious that I can’t be part of this process with you. However, as a retired military person, let me say a few words on strategy and how it is decided.

All planning occurs at three levels. The most basic of activities to be done are referred to as tactics. Tactics are governed by operational planning which comprises of a worked out plan of how to achieve the overall plan or the goal.

The deciding of this overall plan or goal is referred to as strategy.

To be more specific..

“a high level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty..”

And when we do this for a long period of the future, it is more appropriately termed as ‘grand strategy".

For this we have to ponder - What is our aim? What are our strengths? What are our challenges? What are our opportunities? What are our resources and what are our constraints? What path should we take to achieve our aim?

These are to be reduced into a few directions which are broad based, actionable and full of potential. A good strategy must open huge opportunities, new fields, new possibilities.

The is not easy to do or quick to make. It will take more than one session, more than one day, week or even a month to get our strategy right.

Most important of all is that we learn to think in the new paradigm of sharing and open culture. We should leave behind the mindset of scarcity, possessiveness and personal benefit and embrace the values of the common good, creation of opportunities and innovation.

On our success in making a good strategy, depends the fate of millions of our children and youth who will either benefit from our decisions or lose opportunities if we are not wise and generous. We have to believe in the future. We have to want to make that future great for our nation.

I wish you the very best in this endeavour. I repeat, that I am envious that I can't be with you today. I pray that the things we decide from today onward in this process of grand strategy for the Wikimedia movement in the decades to come.

At the very end, I would like to thank the Wikimedia movement in India, CIS-India, the organisers of this salon and of course, my young friend Krishna Chaitanya Velaga for this opportunity.

Jai Hind!

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/guest-blog-retd-col-ashwin-baindur-on-strategy-wikimedia-strategy-salon-vijayawada

UNESCO Internet Universality Indicators consulted at the 8th Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum

praskrishna — 2017-08-23T02:05:44Z

“Internet Universality indicators should measure broad social implications of the Internet and serve as a powerful tool to foster sustainable development,” was a strong message delivered by Asia-Pacific stakeholders at UNESCO consultation to develop Internet Universality indicators during the 8th Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF) in Bangkok (Thailand), 29 July 2017.

This was published by UNESCO on August 9, 2017.

The Bangkok consultation event, co-moderated by Ms. Xianhong Hu (UNESCO) and Ms. Chat Garcia Ramilo (Association for Progressive Communications, APC), brought multi-stakeholders and experts from the Asia Pacific region to contribute to prioritizing issues within the five categories indicators along the Internet Universality R.O.A.M principles, namely on human Rights, Openness, Accessibility, Multi-stakeholder participation, as well as concerning Crosscutting issues.

“Rights entail a number of digital rights including freedom of religious and political expression and right to assembly and association online. Privacy concerns on the Internet are extremely important as well”, stated Ms Gayatri Khandahi from APC on human Rights indicators. In addition, she noted the importance of social and economic rights exercised on the Internet, such as the right to work and the right to political participation, and the jurisdiction challenges of these rights in the pretext of Internet. She emphasized the need to consult also with vulnerable groups, such as women, trans-gender groups and migrants.

Dr. Anja Kovacs from Internet Democracy Project pointed out that rights have impact on other themes or indicators, for instance online abuse of women impacts access in India. She also noted that in the course of developing these indicators, it is crucial to take into account future trends because digital rights are evolving and these indicators might not be useful in 10 years.

“Open Internet is a top concern since it is being limited by many localized requirements. Thus openness requires open and transparent policy and decision making process which is at the core of multi-stakeholder approach”, commented by Prof. Xue Hong from Beijing Normal University on Openness indicators. She suggested “open access” needs to consider people’s various barriers to access Internet, including legal barriers. She suggested that “open source”, “open innovation” and “open market” are also important aspects to measure the level of openness.

On Accessibility indicators, Mr Winston Roberts from the International Federation of Library Associations & Institutions (IFLA) suggested that the definition of universal access needs to be updated and access in various forms can be used as an indicator, such access to broadband. He stressed the importance to include quality access and access in rural areas.

“Access and accessibility should be defined clearly. Access should include indicators to assess quality of service and openness should include assessment of the market”, stated Ms. Bishakha Datta. Mr. Naveed Haq from Internet Society suggested those accessibility indicators could check how many government websites are available to people with disabilities.

“Internet is a classic example where various communities are represented and thus multistakeholderism becomes important”, said Mr. Naveed Haq from Internet Society on Multistakeholder indicators. Mr. Sunil Abraham from Center for Internet Society raised challenges that the government needs to deregulate policies and laws and redo them with a multi-stakeholder process, but on the other hand, private sectors fail to mitigate harm through the self-regulatory model. Mr. Joyce Chen, ICANN representative, highlighted the importance to engage with governments, who need to facilitate more dialogue.

“The rights and interest of those vulnerable groups, such as transgender and women should be considered by the indicators, particularly to assess how rights, such as the right to privacy intersect with their agenda”, suggested by Ms. Bishakha Datta from Point of View on Crosscutting dimension indicators. Dr Anja Kovacs pointed out that it is crucial not miss out groups of people whose interests might not be directly aligned with their governments, for instance refugees or migrants.”

In addition to the ongoing on-site Multistakeholder consultation sessions, UNESCO is now also offering the possibility for interested actors, including Member States, to participate in the consultation online at https://en.unesco.org/internetuniversality.

As an ongoing project developed by UNESCO, Internet Universality Indicators aims to serve as a recognized and authoritative global research tool for national assessing Internet development along the lines of UNESCO’s Internet Universality concept as endorsed by UNESCO 38^th General Conference in 2015. The final indicators will be presented in 2018 and will be submitted to the UNESCO Member States in the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) for endorsement.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/unesco-internet-universality-indicators-consulted-at-the-8th-asia-pacific-regional-internet-governance-forum

Patent Working Requirements and Complex Products

Admin — 2017-10-03T13:33:37Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/files/patent-working-requirements-and-complex-products

July 2017 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2017-08-23T02:03:19Z

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
In an article published in the Huffington Post on July 1, 2017, Nirmita Narasimhan stated that imposing taxes on assistive devices is unfair. It is unconscionable that disability aids and assistive technology are considered a luxury and taxed at a higher rate than rough semi-precious stones or cashew nuts. A research paper on patent working requirements and complex products in India authored by Prof Jorge L. Contreras, University of Utah, and Rohini Lakshané, CIS has been accepted for publication in the Jindal Global Law School Law Review 2017. Negotiators from 16 countries met in Hyderabad for discussing a free trade agreement titled Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership. Anubha Sinha along with Arul George Scaria reported this in an article published by Live Law.in. Supreme Court of India while dismissing an appeal by the Indian Reprographic Rights Organization ruled that there was no copyright infringement and no licence was required since the activities fell under the education exception in Indian copyright law. In an article published by EIFL, Anubha Sinha discusses the judgment and what it means for access to educational materials in India. Odia Wikipedians, in conjunction with Indian Athletics Federation and Sports and Youth Services collaborated to document the 2017 Asian Athletics Championships. Hundreds of photos were uploaded and new Wikipedia content added to inform the event’s fans, wrote Sailesh Patnaik and Jnanaranjan Sahu in a blog post. As recently as May 27, 2016, the General Data Protection Regulation (REGULATION (EU) 2016/679 was adopted The Data Protection Directive (1995/46/EC) will be replaced by this Regulation. It is expected that under this Regulation data privacy will be strengthened. Aditi Chaturvedi analyses the developments in a report.

CIS in the news:

UIDAI declining multiple requests by police to share Indian citizens’ biometrics (Justin Lee; Biometrics; July 4, 2017).
Act now to protect yourself against future ransomware attacks (Sanjay Kumar Singh; Business Standard; July 5, 2017).
Reliance Jio data leaked on website : report (Livemint; July 10, 2017).
Supreme Court sets up constitution bench to hear Aadhaar privacy issues (Priyanka Mittal; Livemint; July 12, 2017).
Centre to form panel to 'encrypt' MGNREGA-DBT database and prevent leaks (Sanjeeb Mukherjee; Business Standard; July 14, 2017).
Calls for law change after Indians left in dark over data leaks (Rahul Bhatia and Sankalp Phartiyal; Reuters; July 14, 2017).
Indians Call For More Stringent Data Protection Laws (PYMTNS; July 17, 2017).
Social Activist Alleges Threat By Police Officer Over Possession of Aadhaar (Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar; Wire; July 16, 2017).

Aadhaar privacy: Key issues that all Aadhaar card holders should bear in mind (Business Today, July 19, 2017).
Data in the open makes it easy for cyber criminals (Kiran Parashar KM; New Indian Express; July 26, 2017).

CIS members wrote the following articles

Why GST Is A Step Backward For The Disabled (Nirmita Narasimhan; Huffington Post; July 1, 2017).
Course Packs for Education Ruled Legal in India (Anubha Sinha; EIFL; July 12, 2017).
Digital native: Not only words (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; July 16, 2017).
Aadhar: Privacy is not a unidimensional concept (Amber Sinha; Economic Times; July 23, 2017).
RCEP IP Chapter: A Serious Threat to Access to Knowledge/ Cultural Goods? (Arul George Scaria and Anubha Sinha; July 27, 2017).
Digital native: Ever on the go (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; July 30, 2017).

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Accessibility & Inclusion
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India has an estimated 70 million persons with disabilities who don't have access to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. As part of our endeavour to make available accessible content for persons with disabilities, we are developing a text-to-speech software in 15 languages with support from the Hans Foundation. The progress made so far in the project can be accessed here.

Article

Why GST Is A Step Backward For The Disabled (Nirmita Narasimhan; Huffington Post; July 1, 2017).

►Pervasive Technologies and Copyright

Research Paper

Patent Working Requirements and Complex Products: An Empirical Assessment of India's Form 27 Practice and Compliance (Jorge L. Contreras and Rohini Lakshané; SSRN and Jindal Global Law School Review; July 17, 2017).

Participation in Event

19th RCEP Meeting (Organized by Ministry of Commerce, Government of India; July 17 - 28, 2017; Hyderabad). Anubha Sinha participated in the meeting.

►Wikipedia

Blog Entries

Note: The events were organized earlier but reports were published in July 2017:

Christ University Wikipedia Education Program Internship (Manasa Rao and Ananth Subray; July 5, 2017).
Christ University Wikipedia Education Program Faculty Orientation Report (Ananth Subray; July 7, 2017).
How It Came To Be: Wiki Loves Uniformed Services (Krishna Chaitanya Velaga; July 10, 2017).
Tallapaka Pada Sahityam is now on Wikisource (Pavan Santhosh; July 10, 2017).
Thematic Edit-a-thon at Yashawantrao Chavan Institute of Science, Satara (Subodh Kulkarni; July 11, 2017).
Asian Athletics Championships 2017 Edit-a-thon (Sailesh Patnaik and Jnanaranjan Sahu; July 31, 2017).

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Internet Governance
-----------------------------------

►Privacy

Blog Entry

Data Protection: Understanding the General Data Protection Regulation (Aditi Chaturvedi; July 4, 2017).

Participation in Event

IViR Summer Course on Privacy Law and Policy (Organized by the University of Amsterdam; July 3 - 7, 2017; Amsterdam). Amber Sinha attended the course.

►Free Speech and Expression and Cyber Security

Participation in Events

OHD on Consultation Paper on Net Neutrality (Organized by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India; July 25, 2017). Pranesh Prakash was a speaker.
UNESCO Multistakeholder consultation at 8th Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF) (Organized by UNESCO; Bangkok; July 26 - 29, 2017). Sunil Abraham was a speaker. Vidhushi Marda also participated in the event.
Cybersecurity Workshop: Spotlight On GCCS 2017 (Organized by Global Partners Digital (GPD) and the Centre for Communication Governance at National Law University, Delhi, in collaboration with Digital Empowerment Foundation, Digital Asia Hub and Open Net Korea; Bangkok; July 25 - 27, 2017). Sunil Abraham was a speaker. Udbhav Tiwari and Vidushi Marda participated in the event.

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

Participation in Event

Workshop on Public Open Wi-Fi Pilot (Organized by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India; July 25, 2017). Pranesh Prakash was a speaker.

Event Organized

Dr. Prerna Prabhakar - Impact of Digitisation of Land Records in Rural India (CIS, New Delhi; July 7, 2017).

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

► Support Us

► Request for Collaboration

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2017-newsletter

Privacy Newsletter February 2017

praskrishna — 2017-07-20T14:00:13Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/privacy-newsletter-february-2017.pdf

June 2017 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2017-07-18T02:21:10Z

Welcome to the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS) newsletter for June 2017.

Dear readers,

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
CIS made a submission on the Goods and Services Tax (GST) that has come into force this year. In the submission assessed the impact of GST on persons with disabilities. Indian Patent Office updated the Guidelines for Examination of Computer Related Inventions. Anubha Sinha throws light on the updated guidelines in a blog post. She has clarified that the updated Guidelines take no concrete position to help clarify the ambiguity around patentability of software inventions in India. A strategic symposium on Marathi Wikipedia and its sister projects was conducted in April 2017. Subodh Kulkarni has shared the developments in a report. Compiled a compendium on cyber security from the Indian context. The document is a comprehensive source compiling all the cyber-security related regulations, policies, guidelines, notifications, executive orders, court rulings, etc. CIS commented on the renewal of the .NET Registry Agreement. CIS expressed its strong opposition to the proposed renewal. The comments were prepared by Vidushi Marda with inputs from Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash. Harsh Gupta discussed "FAT ML (Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in Machine Learning) for Lawyers and Lawmakers" at the CIS office in Delhi on June 29, 2017. Shyam Ponappa in an article in the Business Standard opined that broadband in India needs reforms for local manufacturing and for infrastructure expansion and utilisation

CIS in the news:

Aadhaar: Ushering in a Commercialized Era of Surveillance in India (Jyoti Panday; Electronics Frontier Foundation; June 1, 2017).
Privacy is culture specific, MNCs hit by Aadhaar, says TRAI chief (Pranav Mukul; Indian Express; June 1, 2017).
Centre brings in new safeguards following cases of Aadhaar data leaks on government websites (Nidhi Sharma; Economic Times; June 2, 2017).
New rules for govt agencies to ensure security of personal data (Komal Gupta; Livemint; June 2, 2017).
Explore money apps but watch your data (Shaikh Zoaib Saleem; Livemint; June 8, 2017).
New law to unlock data economy (Yuthika Bhargava; Hindu; June 9, 2017).
Placements at NUJS: Class of 2017 Scores 100% (Simran Sahni; Livelaw; June 10, 2017).
Why did Nandan Nilekani praise a Twitter troll? (Kiran Jonnalgadda; Indian Express; June 10, 2017).
Are biometrics hack-proof? (Shaikh Zoaib Saleem; Livemint; June 11, 2017).
GoldenEye ransomware attack hit operations at Pipavav Port, JNPT (Jyotika Sood and Utpal Bhaskar; Livemint; June 28, 2017).

CIS members wrote the following articles

Digital Native: In digiville attention is Currency (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; June 11, 2017).
Digital Native: On mute, the Voice of the People (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; June 24, 2017).

Submission

GST - A Barrier to Human Rights for Persons with Disabilities (Nirmita Narasimhan; June 24, 2017).

Participation in Events

WSIS Forum 2017 (Co-organized by ITU, UNESCO, UNCTAD and UNDP, in close collaboration with all UN agencies; Geneva; June 12 - 16, 2017). Nirmita Narasimhan was a speaker.
Digital Accessibility (Organized by National Informatics Centre; Bengaluru; June 17, 2017). Rakesh Paladugula, a web accessibility trainer and Nirmita Narasimhan made a presentation to scientists about digital accessibility.

►Copyright

Participation in Event

Fixing Copyright for Education (SCCR34 Side Event) (Communia, EIFL, Creative Commons, and PIJIP; June 7, 2017). Anubha Sinha was a speaker.

►Pervasive Technologies

Participation in Event

Preliminary Findings: Working Requirements for Complex Products under the Indian Patent System (Organized by O.P. Jindal University; New Delhi; June 10 - 11, 2017). Prof. Jorge Contreras gave a talk on a forthcoming paper.

►Wikipedia

Blog Entries

Train The Trainer 2017 (Manasa Rao; June 5, 2017).
Thematic Edit-a-thon at J.P.Naik Centre for Education & Development, Pune (Subodh Kulkarni; June 7, 2017).
Wiki Loves Mayabazaar (Pavan Santhosh; June 7, 2017).
Marathi Wikipedia Symposium at Gokhale Institute Of Politics & Economics (Subodh Kulkarni; June 7, 2017).
Digitisation, Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource Orientation Workshop at Vigyan Ashram, Pabal, Pune District (Subodh Kulkarni; June 7, 2017).

Note: The workshops for the above blog posts were held earlier but the reports were published during the month of June.

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Internet Governance
-----------------------------------

►Cybersecurity

Blog Entry

Cybersecurity Compilation: Indian Context (Leilah Elmokadem and edited by Elonnai Hickok; June 18, 2017).

Participation in Events

2nd India Think Tank Forum (Organized by Observer Research Foundation; New Delhi; June 19 - 21, 2017). Udbhav Tiwari participated in the forum.
Second India China Think-Tank Forum (Organized by Institute of Chinese Studies, the Indian Council of World Affairs, and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Beijing; June 22 - 27, 2017). Saikat Dutta represented an Indian think tank.

►Free Speech and Expression

Submission

Comments from the Centre for Internet and Society on Renewal of .NET Registry Agreement (Vidushi Marda, Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash; June 6, 2017).

Participation in Events

ISEA 2017 (Organized by the University of Caldas, Manizales; Columbia; June 11 - 16, 2017). Sharat Chandra Ram was a panelist.
Freedom of Expression on the Internet : Possibilities and Challenges (Organized by Bolivar Technological University; Cartagena; June 29, 2017). Sharat Chandra Ram was a speaker.

►Privacy

Participation in Events

BIS LITD 17 Privacy Panel meeting (Organized by National School of India University; Bangalore; June 21, 2017). Udbhav Tiwari attended the meeting.
DSCI Best Practices Meet (Organized by Data Security Council of India; Bangalore; June 22 - 23, 2017). Udbhav Tiwari attended the meeting.

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

Newspaper Column

Broadband Reforms for Local Manufacturing (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard; May 31, 2017 and Organizing India Blogspot; June 5, 2017).

Event Organized

CISxScholars Delhi - Harsh Gupta - FAT ML for Lawyers and Lawmakers (CIS; New Delhi; June 29, 2017). Harsh Gupta gave a talk.

-----------------------------------

► Follow us elsewhere

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

► Support Us

► Request for Collaboration

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/june-2017-newsletter

Digital native: Not only words

nishant — 2017-08-07T15:33:20Z

The article was published in the Indian Express on July 16, 2017.

Emoticons, or if you prefer the original Japanese word emojis, are everywhere. We are used to emoticons in all shapes and sizes — from animated gifs jumping out at us on our social media feed to yellow-faced smileys that we use to add tone and feeling, nuance and layers to our text-heavy conversations in the digital world. For many of the current users of digital communication, emoticons are pre-defined pictures that they select from a menu that gives them access to add a wink, a nod, a smiling or sad face to their messages. However, there are power users who, I am sure, still remember the times when emoticons were things that you created.

Before the emergence of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) that turned the computer into a box of cuteness, turning all of us into eternal children playing with the friendly faces of the digital platforms, the digital world was flat and largely textual. Emoticons were first proposed in 1982 to take away the density and the unforgiving monotone of text-based conversations on digital platforms. From that first proposal of a : ) and : ( sign to indicate the mood of a text, emoticons have had a fascinating history of evolution. Following the proposal of the basic emoticons by Scott Fahlman, a variety of early adopters of the web came up with a wide range of options. The smiley became a grin with : D and the sad face was made to weep with : ‘ (. The face became mischievous and winked with a ;) and swooned in love with a <3. It became silly with its tongue poking out :p and sprouted devil horns to show its inherent wickedness with >:D.

Early users will remember how, from that first explosion, the emoticons grew into forming extremely intricate art forms. In the world of text-based virtual realities, the shrugging emoticon was my constant companion when giving up on futile internet arguments : ¯\_(?)_/¯ . From there, we were only one step away from complex ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) art forms that made punctuation and critical marks the new tools for emerging artists to play with. The ASCII characters were keyboard symbols, letters and numbers mixed together to produce images ranging from flowers and animals to the globe and human bodies. In fact, ASCII became such a huge rage that there were special forums where people submitted their ASCII art. Even though we have now achieved high visual fidelity with our powerful computing devices, the ASCII messages still continue on our WhatsApp groups and discussion forums. So that we still tell people we love them in ASCII

(¯`v´¯)
`·.¸.·´ I Love
¸.·´¸.·´¨) ¸.·*¨)
(¸.·´ (¸.·´ .·´ You… or pledge friendship in punctuation
(‘,’)/\(‘,’)
<) )—( (>
_\\__//_

One of the lesser known histories of emoticons and ASCII, however, has been forgotten in the gentrified, cute and commodified mass produced usage that we have put them to. In many cultures and spaces in those early days of the web, emoticons were also ways of resisting censorship and circumventing supervision. As the web became more open and more people started signing up for digital conversations, there was also an increase in the monitoring and surveillance of things online. In more conservative cultures, there were immediate bans on conversations that were considered pornographic or obscene. In stricter work places, the system administrators were trying to filter messages which might have certain words or images in their content. ASCII and emoticons came to the rescue, because, using these characters which the computer only read as punctuation marks without content, people were able to communicate sexual content without the fear of censorship.

In the late ’90s, there were graphic and explicit ASCII images that were circulated, so that the content filters would not detect them, and, using just the characters, the earliest internet porn, or Pr0n as it was tagged, came into being. The emoticon-filled messages were not just about nodding and winking at each other but also a way for people to question authority and to find new modes of expression. Since those days of subversion, emoticons have come a long way, becoming appropriated in our everyday practice — they have been tamed and made mainstream.

I am sure that the ubiquity of the emoticons produces a sense of irritation sometimes, and you want to send a slapping emoticon when you find a work email with a smiley face at the end. But before you announce the death of the emoticon, you might want to know that digital natives are experimenting with the radical power of these emoticons. They are developing an entirely new language filled with exploding bananas, pulsating aubergines, peeking monkeys, dancing unicorns, and victorious roosters to communicate in ways that are not accessible to the parents, teachers and authority figures around them. The repurposing of emoticons by young users to chat, express, flirt, tease and engage with each other in ways that defy all conventional sense. I find this fascinating because it gives me hope that the web is not going to just produce all users as cheap copies of each other.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/raw/indian-express-nishant-shah-july-16-2017-digital-native-not-only-words

Centre to form panel to 'encrypt' MGNREGA-DBT database and prevent leaks

praskrishna — 2017-07-14T10:46:45Z

Around 5 crore bank accounts of active MGNREGA workers yet to be seeded with Aadhaar.

The article by Sanjeeb Mukherjee was published in the Business Standard on July 14, 2017.

Alarmed over reports of ‘public disclosure’ of sensitive Aadhaar data through various portals and payment gateways, the Centre is in the process of appointing a high-powered panel of almost 20 experts to suggest ways and means through which data, particularly one which can be accessed through the MGNREGA-DBT platform can be encrypted.

Encryption, officials believe, would prevent the Aadhaar data and other related information from falling into wrong hands.

The need for proper encryption of Aadhaar data rose after the government made it mandatory for availing almost all benefits - be it school scholarships, payments of MGNREGA wages, identification of beneficiaries under mid-day meal scheme and even public distribution system along with others.

Ensuring cyber security has become all the more necessary as the Central government, in a notification issued last month, has made it mandatory for all bank accounts to be seeded with Aadhaar numbers by December 31, 2017, or else they would cease to be operational until the time the account holder furnishes his Aadhaar number.

This could seriously hamper payment of wages to MGNREGA workers because as per available information almost 5 crore active workers don’t have their bank accounts seeded with Aadhaar.

To complete the process before December 2017, the ministry of rural development has planned special Aadhaar camps to be held in villages from July 20 to September 2017.

Recently, a website published all confidential details of customers of a private telecom company including Aadhaar numbers and other information.

The breach was another instance of secure confidential information falling into public domain.

Officials of the panel, which would be headed by former NASSCOM head Kiran Karnik are expected to submit their report on the same within the next few months.

Other members of the panel include Director General of National Institute of Smart Governance (NISG), officials from Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (ICERT) and others.

However, cyber security experts believe that encrypting Aadhaar-DBT details mainly for those schemes and programmes which have a direct linkage with the public at this later stage has its own challenges as the entire ecosystem around Aadhaar has grown manifold ever since it was made mandatory for a variety of programmes.

Also, in the absence of a national encryption policy, such a move will have its own legal and regulatory challenges.

“Ever since the government made Aadhaar mandatory for many things, the entire ecosystem around it including the Central Identities Data Repository (the agency which stores Aadhaar data is exposed to leaks,” noted cyber law expert Pawan Duggal told Business Standard.

He said that without a proper national encryption law, it would be extremely challenging to provide legal and regulatory backing to encrypt all Aadhaar- DBT data details for MGNREGA. “Also now that the ‘cat is out of the bag,’ encryption of Aadhaar details will be hugely challenging,” Duggal said.

Already, civil society activists said that after some concern, the central government has removed all Aadhaar numbers and bank details from MGNREGA website, which has made tracking payments difficult.

A recent study by Amber Sinha and Srinivas Kodali from the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) found that granular details about individuals including sensitive personally identifiable information such as Aadhaar number, caste, religion, address, photographs and financial information are only a few clicks away through government schemes dashboard and portals.

“While initiatives such as the government open data portals may be laudable for providing easy access to government data condensed for easy digestion, however in the absence of proper controls exercised by the government departments the results can be disastrous by divulging sensitive and adversely actionable information about the individuals who are responding units of such databases,” the report said.

It specifically studied two major schemes of the ministry of rural development; the National National Social Assistance Programme and MGNREGA along with some state schemes.

Pointers

a) Centre to form a panel to encrypt all MGNREGA-DBT database to prevent leaks.

b) The panel might also suggest ways and means in which such ‘encryption’ could be applied in other platforms.

c) The panel is expected to be headed by former NASSCOM head Kiran Karnik.

d) The encryption is essential as from January 2018 all non-Aadhaar seeded bank accounts will cease to be operational unless the holders seed them.

e) A recent study found that vivid details about individuals can be easily accessed from government platforms and databases.

f) The MGNREGA database was one such publicly available platform which formed part of the study.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/business-standard-sanjeeb-mukherjee-july-14-2017-centre-to-form-panel-to-encrypt-mgnrega-dbt-database-and-prevent-leaks