Centre for Internet and Society

November 2016 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2017-02-06T12:52:38Z

Welcome to the November 2016 newsletter of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).

Dear readers,

As we bring in the new year here at CIS, we thank you for your continued interest and support.

Over the course of the previous year, government services and functions became more dependent on information technologies, concerns over cybersecurity and the vulnerability of electronic infrastructure grew, and new developments and challenges arose in the fields of Internet governance and free speech and expression.

In the wake of this major year of developments, the work that CIS does is even more important. We look forward to engaging with these and other emerging issues, in 2017 and beyond.

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
Geethanjali Jujjavarapu and Udbhav Tiwari undertook a high-level literature review of the most commonly used technological tools and processes in the big data life cycle. In the research paper the authors have argued that big data life cycle is a conceptual construct that can be used to study the various stages that typically occur in collecting, storing and analysing big data, along with the principles that can govern these processes. Nirmita Narasimhan in a blog post published by Your Story has thrown light on the various challenges which persons with disabilities have to overcome. She has stressed that promoting use of technology and open source software and imparting training at an early age will go a long way in making students with disabilities self-sufficient and independent. Government of India's work is not available under free and open licenses as is the case in various other nations. Tito Dutta has called upon the Indian government to make its work freely licensed, wherever possible and applicable. The 33rd WIPO-SCCR was held in Geneva from November 14 - 18, 2016. Anubha Sinha attended the meeting. CIS made its statements on the GRULAC Proposal for Analysis of Copyright in the Digital Environment and the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations. What if our phones were to go silent? Would you be able to deal with the silence? Nishant Shah has explored this in an article published in the Indian Express. In a consolidated compilation titled Privacy after Big Data we have put together a series of articles that we have developed as we explore the impacts – positive and negative – of big data. This is a growing body of research that we are exploring and is relevant to multiple areas of our work including privacy and surveillance. CIS has called for comments for this compilation. The second Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC17) is scheduled to take place in Bengaluru between March 3 - 5, 2017. From the 23 submitted session proposals CIS will select 10 to be part of the final Conference agenda. The selection will be done through votes casted by the teams that have proposed the sessions. This will take place in December 2016.

CIS in the news:

Using Kannada in technology made easier with smartphones (New Indian Express; November 1, 2016).
'Delink ICANN from US jurisdiction' (Deccan Herald; November 12, 2016).
Google, Facebook will not place ads on sites distributing fake news (John Riberio; IDG News Service and CIO; November 14, 2016).
How The U.K. Got A Better Deal From Facebook Than India Did (Payaswini Upadhyay; Bloomberg Quint; November 17, 2016).
The thrill of saving India from cybercrime (Peerzada Abrar; Hindu; November 20, 2016).
Free Net advocates flay Trai's public Wi-Fi paper (Anita Babu; Business Standard; November 20, 2016).
Popular apps are inaccessible to millions of disabled: Study (Arpita Raj; The Times of India and ET Brand Equity; November 21, 2016).
Caught in a filter bubble (Chethana Divya Vasudev; November 22, 2016).
A world apart (Meera Siva; Hindu Businessline; November 27, 2016).
Disabled kid? sorry, no admission! (New Indian Express; November 28, 2016).
Guru Gomke is a Stylish Ol Chiki Typeface for India’s Santali Speakers (AIGA.org; November 29, 2016).

CIS members wrote the following articles

Where Are There So Few Books For The Print-Impaired? (Nirmita Narasimhan; Huffington Post; November 3, 2016).
4 tips for DIY makers (Subhashish Panigrahi; November 18, 2016).
Digital native: The Voices in Our Heads (Nishant Shah; November 20, 2016).
The Quest for Education – Persons with Disabilities, Severely Challenged (Nirmita Narasimhan; Your Story; November 24, 2016).
Demonetisation Survey Limits the Range of Feedback that can be Provided by the User (Udbhav Tiwari; November 24, 2016).

Jobs

CIS is presently seeking applications for the following positions

Policy Officer (Cyber Security)
Senior Policy Officer (Cyber Security)
Intern (Pervasive Technologies Project) - Application accepted throughout the year
Internship - Application accepted throughout the year
Survey Participants for Research on Musician Livelihood

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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.

►Copyright & Patent

Blog Entries

33rd SCCR: Opening Statement by India on behalf of the Asia and the Pacific Group (Anubha Sinha; November 14, 2016).
33rd SCCR: CIS Statement on the Proposed Treaty for the Protection of Broadcasting Organizations (Anubha Sinha; November 16, 2016).
33rd SCCR: CIS Statement on the GRULAC Proposal for Analysis of Copyright in the Digital Environment (Anubha Sinha; November 18, 2016).

►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).

Event Organized

Sambalpur University Workshop (Sambalpur; November 27, 2016).

Participation in Event

CIIPC-NLUD Workshop on Wikipedia Editing and Open Source Knowledge Sources (Organized by Centre for Innovation, Intellectual Property, and Competition (CIIPC), National Law university, Delhi; November 11 - 12, 2016). Rohini Lakshané and Tanveer Hasan conducted and facilitated this workshop.

Blog Entries

Wikipedia Asian Month — 2016 iteration starts on 1 November (Tito Dutta; November 1, 2016)
100 Wikidays: The Journey so Far (Tito Dutta; November 23, 2016)
Free Knowledge and Indian Government Work (Tito Dutta; November 26, 2016).
Improving Telugu Village Articles (Pavan Santhosh; November 26, 2016).

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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 Entry

Conference on the Digitalization of the Indian Legal System (Leilah Elmokadem; November 16, 2016)

Participation in Event

Industry Consultation Panel on Data Retention - DSCI (Organized by the Data Security Council of India; New Delhi; November 23, 2016). Udbhav Tiwari was a panelist.

►Big Data

Blog Entry

Privacy after Big Data: Compilation of Early Research (Saumyaa Naidu; November 12, 2016).
Big Data in India: Benefits, Harms, and Human Rights - Workshop Report (Vidushi Marda, Akash Deep Singh and Geethanjali Jujjavarapu; November 14, 2016).

►Cyber Security

Blog Entry

CERT-In's Proactive Mandate - A Report on the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team’s Proactive Mandate in the Indian Cyber Security Ecosystem (Udbhav Tiwari; November 19, 2016).

►Free Speech and Expression

Blog Entries

If the DIDP Did Its Job (Asvatha Babu; November 3, 2016)
Internet's Core Resources are a Global Public Good - They Cannot Remain Subject to One Country's Jurisdiction (Vidushi Marda; November 9, 2016)
How Workstream 2 Plans to Improve ICANN's Transparency (Asvatha Babu; November 10, 2016).
ICANN Begins its Sojourn into Open Data (Padmini Baruah and Sumandro Chattapadhyay; November 11, 2016).
Navigating the 'Reconsideration' Quagmire (A Personal Journey of Acute Confusion).

Participation in Events

ICANN 57 (Organized by Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India; Hyderabad International Convention Centre; November 3 - 9, 2016). Vidushi Marda was a speaker.
10th NLSIR Symposium - Regulating E-Commerce in India (Organized by National Law School of India University, Bengaluru; November 27, 2016). Vidushi Marda was a panelist.

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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:

Blog Entry

Internet Researchers' Conference 2017 (IRC17) - Selection of Sessions (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; November 16, 2016).

Event Organized

CISxScholars Delhi - William F. Stafford (CIS; New Delhi; November 3, 2016).

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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/november-2016-newsletter

Big Data in India: Benefits, Harms, and Human Rights - Workshop Report

Vidushi Marda, Akash Deep Singh and Geethanjali Jujjavarapu — 2016-11-18T12:58:19Z

The Centre for Internet and Society held a one-day workshop on “Big Data in India: Benefits, Harms and Human Rights” at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi on the 1st of October, 2016. This report is a compilation of the the issues discussed, ideas exchanged and challenges recognized during the workshop. The objective of the workshop was to discuss aspects of big data technologies in terms of harms, opportunities and human rights. The discussion was designed around an extensive study of current and potential future uses of big data for governance in India, that CIS has undertaken over the last year with support from the MacArthur Foundation.

Contents

Big Data: Definitions and Global South Perspectives

Aadhaar as Big Data

Seeding

Aadhaar and Data Security

Aadhaar’s Relational Arrangement with Big Data Scheme

The Myths surrounding Aadhaar

IndiaStack and FinTech Apps

Problems with UID

Big Data: Definitions and Global South Perspectives

“Big Data” has been defined by multiple scholars till date. The first consideration at the workshop was to discuss various definitions of big data, and also to understand what could be considered Big Data in terms of governance, especially in the absence of academic consensus. One of the most basic ways to define it, as given by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA, is to take it to be the data that is beyond the computational capacity of current systems. This definition has been accepted by the UIDAI of India. Another participant pointed out that Big Data is not only indicative of size, but rather the nature of data which is unstructured, and continuously flowing. The Gartner definition of Big Data relies on the three Vs i.e. Volume (size), Velocity (infinite number of ways in which data is being continuously collected) and Variety (the number of ways in which data can be collected in rows and columns).

The presentation also looked at ways in which Big Data is different from traditional data. It was pointed out that it can accommodate diverse unstructured datasets, and it is ‘relational’ i.e. it needs the presence of common field(s) across datasets which allows these fields to be conjoined. For e.g., the UID in India is being linked to many different datasets, and they don’t constitute Big Data separately, but do so together. An increasingly popular definition is to define data as “Big Data” based on what can be achieved through it. It has been described by authors as the ability to harness new kinds of insight which can inform decision making. It was pointed out that CIS does not subscribe to any particular definition, and is still in the process of coming up with a comprehensive definition of Big Data.

Further, discussion touched upon the approach to Big Data in the Global South. It was pointed out that most discussions about Big Data in the Global South are about the kind of value that it can have, the ways in which it can change our society. The Global North, on the other hand, has moved on to discussing the ethics and privacy issues associated with Big Data.

After this, the presentation focussed on case studies surrounding key Central Government initiatives and projects like Aadhaar, Predictive Policing, and Financial Technology (FinTech).

Aadhaar as Big Data

In presenting CIS’ case study on Aadhaar, it was pointed out that initially, Aadhaar, with its enrollment dataset was by itself being seen as Big Data. However, upon careful consideration in light of definitions discussed above, it can be seen as something that enables Big Data. The different e-governance projects within Digital India, along with Aadhaar, constitute Big Data. The case study discussed the Big Data implications of Aadhaar, and in particular looked at a ‘cradle to grave’ identity mapping through various e-government projects and the datafication of various transaction generated data.

Seeding

Any digital identity like Aadhaar typically has three features: 1. Identification i.e. a number or card used to identify yourself; 2. Authentication, which is based on your number or card and any other digital attributes that you might have; 3. Authorisation: As bearers of the digital identity, we can authorise the service providers to take some steps on our behalf. The case study discussed ‘seeding’ which enables the Big Data aspects of Digital India. In the process of seeding, different government databases can be seeded with the UID number using a platform called Ginger. Due to this, other databases can be connected to UIDAI, and through it, data from other databases can be queried by using your Aadhaar identity itself. This is an example of relationality, where fractured data is being brought together. At the moment, it is not clear whether this access by UIDAI means that an actual physical copy of such data from various sources will be transferred to UIDAI’s servers or if they will just access it through internet, but the data remains on the host government agency’s server. An example of even private parties becoming a part of this infrastructure was raised by a participant when it was pointed out that Reliance Jio is now asking for fingerprints. This can then be connected to the relational infrastructure being created by UIDAI. The discussion then focused on how such a structure will function, where it was mentioned that as of now, it cannot be said with certainty that UIDAI will be the agency managing this relational infrastructure in the long run, even though it is the one building it.

Aadhaar and Data Security

This case study also dealt with the sheer lack of data protection legislation in India except for S.43A of the IT Act. The section does not provide adequate protection as the constitutionality of the rules and regulations under S.43A is ambivalent. More importantly, it only refers to private bodies. Hence, any seeding which is being done by the government is outside the scope of data protection legislation. Thus, at the moment, no legal framework covers the processes and the structures being used for datasets. Due to the inapplicability of S.43A to public bodies, questions were raised as to the existence of a comprehensive data protection policy for government institutions. Participants answered the question in the negative. They pointed out that if any government department starts collecting data, they develop their own privacy policy. There are no set guidelines for such policies and they do not address concerns related to consent, data minimisation and purpose limitation at all. Questions were also raised about the access and control over Big Data with government institutions. A tentative answer from a participant was that such data will remain under the control of the domain specific government ministry or department, for e.g. MNREGA data with the Ministry of Rural Development, because the focus is not on data centralisation but rather on data linking. As long as such fractured data is linked and there is an agency that is responsible to link them, this data can be brought together. Such data is primarily for government agencies. But the government is opening up certain aspects of the data present with it for public consumption for research and entrepreneurial purposes.The UIDAI provides you access to your own data after paying a minimal fee. The procedure for such access is still developing.

Aadhaar’s Relational Arrangement with Big Data Scheme

The various Digital India schemes brought in by the government were elucidated during the workshop. It was pointed out that these schemes extend to myriad aspects of a citizen’s daily life and cover all the essential public services like health, education etc. This makes Aadhaar imperative even though the Supreme Court has observed that it is not mandatory for every citizen to have a unique identity number. The benefits of such identity mapping and the ecosystem being generated by it was also enumerated during the discourse. But the complete absence of any data ethics or data confidentiality principles make us unaware of the costs at which these benefits are being conferred on us. Apart from surveillance concerns, the knowledge gap being created between the citizens and the government was also flagged. Three main benefits touted to be provided by Aadhaar were then analysed. The first is the efficient delivery of services. This appears to be an overblown claim as the Aadhaar specific digitisation and automation does not affect the way in which employment will be provided to citizens through MNREGA or how wage payment delays will be overcome. These are administrative problems that Aadhaar and associated technologies cannot solve. The second is convenience to the citizens. The fallacies in this assertion were also brought out and identified. Before the Aadhaar scheme was rolled in, ration cards were issued based on certain exclusion and inclusion criteria.. The exclusion and inclusion criteria remain the same while another hurdle in the form of Aadhaar has been created. As India is still lacking in supporting infrastructure such as electricity, server connectivity among other things, Aadhaar is acting as a barrier rather than making it convenient for citizens to enroll in such schemes.The third benefit is fraud management. Here, a participant pointed out that this benefit was due to digitisation in the form of GPS chips in food delivery trucks and electronic payment and not the relational nature of Aadhaar. Aadhaar is only concerned with the linking up or relational part. About deduplication, it was pointed out how various government agencies have tackled it quite successfully by using technology different from biometrics which is unreliable at the best of times.

The Myths surrounding Aadhaar

The discussion also reflected on the fact that Aadhaar is often considered to be a panacea that subsumes all kinds of technologies to tackle leakages. However, this does not take into account the fact that leakages happen in many ways. A system should have been built to tackle those specific kinds of leakages, but the focus is solely on Aadhaar as the cure for all. Notably, participants who have been a part of the government pointed out how this myth is misleading and should instead be seen as the first step towards a more digitally enhanced country which is combining different technologies through one medium.

IndiaStack and FinTech Apps

What is India Stack?

The focus then shifted to another extremely important Big Data project, India Stack, being conceptualised and developed by a team of private developers called iStack, for the NPCI. It builds on the UID project, Jan Dhan Yojana and mobile services trinity to propagate and develop a cashless, presence-less, paperless and granular consent layer based on UID infrastructure to digitise India.

A participant pointed out that the idea of India Stack is to use UID as a platform and keep stacking things on it, such that more and more applications are developed. This in turn will help us to move from being a ‘data poor’ country to a ‘data rich’ one. The economic benefits of this data though as evidenced from the TAGUP report - a report about the creation of National Information Utilities to manage the data that is present with the government - is for the corporations and not the common man. The TAGUP report openly talks about privatisation of data.

Problems with India Stack

The granular consent layer of India Stack hasn’t been developed yet but they have proposed to base it on MIT Media Lab’s OpenPDS system. The idea being that, on the basis of the choices made by the concerned person, access to a person’s personal information may be granted to an agency like a bank. What is more revolutionary is that India Stack might even revoke this access if the concerned person expresses a wish to do so or the surrounding circumstances signal to India Stack that it will be prudent to do so. It should be pointed out that the the technology required for OpenPDS is extremely complex and is not available in India. Moreover, it’s not clear how this system would work. Apart from this, even the paperless layer has its faults and has been criticised by many since its inception, because an actual government signed and stamped paper has been the basis of a claim.. In the paperless system, you are provided a Digilocker in which all your papers are stored electronically, on the basis of your UID number. However, it was brought to light that this doesn’t take into account those who either do not want a Digilocker or UID number or cases where they do not have access to their digital records. How in such cases will people make claims?

A Digital Post-Dated Cheque: It’s Ramifications

A key change that FinTech apps and the surrounding ecosystem want to make is to create a digital post-dated cheque so as to allow individuals to get loans from their mobiles especially in remote areas. This will potentially cut out the need to construct new banks, thus reducing the capital expenditure , while at the same time allowing the credit services to grow. The direct transfer of money between UID numbers without the involvement of banks is a step to further help this ecosystem grow. Once an individual consents to such a system, however, automatic transfer of money from one’s bank accounts will be affected, regardless of the reason for payment. This is different from auto debt deductions done by banks presently, as in the present system banks have other forms of collateral as well. The automatic deduction now is only affected if these other forms are defaulted upon. There is no knowledge as to whether this consent will be reversible or irreversible. As Jan Dhan Yojana accounts are zero balance accounts, the account holder will be bled dry. The implication of schemes such as “Loan in under 8 minutes” were also discussed. The advantage of such schemes is that transaction costs are reduced.The financial institution can thus grant loans for the minimum amount without any additional enquiries. It was pointed out that this new system is based on living on future income much like the US housing bubble crash. Interestingly, in Public Distribution Systems, biometrics are insisted upon even though it disrupts the system. This can be seen as a part of the larger infrastructure to ensure that digital post-dated cheques become a success.

The Role of FinTech Apps

FinTech ‘apps’ are being presented with the aim of propagating financial inclusion. The Technology Advisory Group for Unique Projects report stated that as managing such information sources is a big task, just like electricity utilities, a National Information Utilities (NIU) should be set up for data sources. These NIUs as per the report will follow a fee based model where they will be charging for their services for government schemes. The report identified two key NIUs namely the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN). The key usage that FinTech applications will serve is credit scoring. The traditional credit scoring data sources only comprised a thin file of records for an individual, but the data that FinTech apps collect - a person’s UID number, mobile number. and bank account number all linked up, allow for a far more comprehensive credit rating. Government departments are willing to share this data with FinTech apps as they are getting analysis in return. Thus, by using UID and the varied data sources that have been linked together by UID, a ‘thick file’ is now being created by FinTech apps. Banking apps have not yet gone down the route of FinTech apps to utilise Big Data for credit scoring purposes.

The two main problems with such apps is that there is no uniform way of credit scoring. This distorts the rate at which a person has to pay interest. The consent layer adds another layer of complication as refusal to share mobile data with a FinTech app may lead to the app declaring one to be a risky investment thus, subjecting that individual to a higher rate of interest .

Regulation of FinTech Apps and the UID Infrastructure

India Stack and the applications that are being built on it, generate a lot of transaction metadata that is very intimate in nature. The privacy aspects of the UID legislation doesn't cover such data. The granular consent layer which has been touted to cover this still has to come into existence. Also, Big Data is based on sharing and linking of data. Here, privacy concerns and Big Data objectives clash. Big Data by its very nature challenges privacy principles like data minimisation and purpose limitation.The need for regulation to cover the various new apps and infrastructure which are being developed was pointed out.

Problems with UID

It has been observed that any problem present with Aadhaar is usually labelled as a teething problem, it’s claimed that it will be solved in the next 10 years. But, this begs the question - why is the system online right now?

Aadhaar is essentially a new data condition and a new exclusion or inclusion criteria. Data exclusion modalities as observed in Rajasthan after the introduction of biometric Point of Service (POS) machines at ration shops was found to be 45% of the population availing PDS services. This number also includes those who were excluded from the database by being included in the wrong dataset. There is no information present to tell us how many actual duplicates and how many genuine ration card holders were weeded out/excluded by POS.

It was also mentioned that any attempt to question Aadhaar is considered to be an attempt to go back to the manual system and this binary thinking needs to change. Big Data has the potential to benefit people, as has been evidenced by the scholarship and pension portals. However, Big Data’s problems arise in systems like PDS, where there is centralised exclusion at the level of the cloud. Moreover, the quantity problem present in the PDS and MNREGA systems persists. There is still the possibility of getting lesser grains and salary even with analysis of biometrics, hence proving that there are better technologies to tackle these problems. Presently, the accountability mechanisms are being weakened as the poor don’t know where to go to for redressal. Moreover, the mechanisms to check whether the people excluded are duplicates or not is not there. At the time of UID enrollment, out of 90 crores, 9 crore were rejected. There was no feedback or follow-up mechanism to figure out why are people being rejected. It was just assumed that they might have been duplicates.

Another problem is the rolling out of software without checking for inefficiencies or problems at a beta testing phase. The control of developers over this software, is so massive that it can be changed so easily without any accountability.. The decision making components of the software are all proprietary like in the the de-duplication algorithm being used by the UIDAI. Thus, this leads to a loss of accountability because the system itself is in flux, none of it is present in public domain and there are no means to analyse it in a transparent fashion..

These schemes are also being pushed through due to database politics. On a field study of NPR of citizens, another Big Data scheme, it was found that you are assumed to be an alien if you did not have the documents to prove that you are a citizen. Hence, unless you fulfill certain conditions of a database, you are excluded and are not eligible for the benefits that being on the database afford you.

Why is the private sector pushing for UIDAI and the surrounding ecosystem?

Financial institutions stand to gain from encouraging the UID as it encourages the credit culture and reduces transaction costs.. Another advantage for the private sector is perhaps the more obvious one, that is allows for efficient marketing of products and services..

The above mentioned fears and challenges were actually observed on the ground and the same was shown through the medium of a case study in West Bengal on the smart meters being installed there by the state electricity utility. While the data coming in from these smart meters is being used to ensure that a more efficient system is developed,it is also being used as a surrogate for income mapping on the basis of electricity bills being paid. This helps companies profile neighbourhoods. The technical officer who first receives that data has complete control over it and he can easily misuse the data. This case study again shows that instruments like Aadhaar and India Stack are limited in their application and aren’t the panacea that they are portrayed to be.

A participant pointed out that in the light of the above discussions, the aim appears to be to get all kinds of data, through any source, and once you have gotten the UID, you link all of this data to the UID number, and then use it in all the corporate schemes that are being started. Most of the problems associated with Big Data are being described as teething problems. The India Stack and FinTech scheme is coming in when we already know about the problems being faced by UID. The same problems will be faced by India Stack as well.

Can you opt out of the Aadhaar system and the surrounding ecosystem?

The discussion then turned towards whether there can be voluntary opting out from Aadhaar. It was pointed out that the government has stated that you cannot opt out of Aadhaar. Further, the privacy principles in the UIDAI bill are ambiguously worded where individuals only have recourse for basic things like correction of your personal information. The enforcement mechanism present in the UIDAI Act is also severely deficient. There is no notification procedure if a data breach occurs. . The appellate body ‘Cyber Appellate Tribunal’ has not been set up in three years.

CCTNS: Big Data and its Predictive Uses

What is Predictive Policing?

The next big Big Data case study was on the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS). Originally it was supposed to be a digitisation and interconnection scheme where police records would be digitised and police stations across the length and breadth of the country would be interconnected. But, in the last few years some police departments of states like Chandigarh, Delhi and Jharkhand have mooted the idea of moving on to predictive policing techniques. It envisages the use of existing statistical and actuarial techniques along with many other tropes of data to do so. It works in four ways: 1. By predicting the place and time where crimes might occur; 2. To predict potential future offenders; 3. To create profiles of past crimes in order to predict future crimes; 4. Predicting groups of individuals who are likely to be victims of future crimes.

How is Predictive Policing done?

To achieve this, the following process is followed: 1. Data collection from various sources which includes structured data like FIRs and unstructured data like call detail records, neighbourhood data, crime seasonal patterns etc. 2. Analysis by using theories like the near repeat theory, regression models on the basis of risk factors etc. 3. Intervention

Flaws in Predictive Policing and questions of bias

An obvious weak point in the system is that if the initial data going into the system is wrong or biased, the analysis will also be wrong. Efforts are being made to detect such biases. An important way to do so will be by building data collection practices into the system that protect its accuracy. The historical data being entered into the system is carrying on the prejudices inherited from the British Raj and biases based on religion, caste, socio-economic background etc.

One participant brought about the issue of data digitization in police stations, and the impact of this haphazard, unreliable data on a Big Data system. This coupled with paucity of data is bound to lead to arbitrary results. An effective example was that of black neighbourhoods in the USA. These are considered problematic and thus they are policed more, leading to a higher crime rate as they are arrested for doing things that white people in an affluent neighbourhood get away with. This in turn further perpetuates the crime rate and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. In India, such a phenomenon might easily develop in the case of migrants, de-notified tribes, Muslims etc. A counter-view on bias and discrimination was offered here. One participant pointed out that problems with haphazard or poor quality of data is not a colossal issue as private companies are willing to fill this void and are actually doing so in exchange for access to this raw data. It was also pointed out how bias by itself is being used as an all encompassing term. There are multiplicities of biases and while analysing the data, care should be taken to keep it in mind that one person’s bias and analysis might and usually does differ from another. Even after a computer has analysed the data, the data still falls into human hands for implementation.

The issue of such databases being used to target particular communities on the basis of religion, race, caste, ethnicity among other parameters was raised. Questions about control and analysis of data were also discussed, i.e. whether it will be top-down with data analysis being done in state capitals or will this analysis be done at village and thana levels as well too. It was discussed as topointed out how this could play a major role in the success and possible persecutory treatment of citizens, as the policemen at both these levels will have different perceptions of what the data is saying. . It was further pointed out, that at the moment, there’s no clarity on the mode of implementation of Big Data policing systems. Police in the USA have been seen to rely on Big Data so much that they have been seen to become ‘data myopic’. For those who are on the bad side of Big Data, in the Indian context, laws like preventive detention can be heavily misused.There’s a very high chance that predictive policing due to the inherent biases in the system and the prejudices and inefficiency of the legal system will further suppress the already targeted sections of the society. A counterpoint was raised and it was suggested that contrary to our fears, CCTNS might lead to changes in our understanding and help us to overcome longstanding biases.

Open Knowledge Architecture as a solution to Big Data biases?

The conference then mulled over the use of ‘Open Knowledge’ architecture to see whether it can provide the solution to rid Big Data of its biases and inaccuracies if enough eyes are there. It was pointed out that Open Knowledge itself can’t provide foolproof protection against these biases as the people who make up the eyes themselves are predominantly male belonging to the affluent sections of the society and they themselves suffer from these biases.

Who exactly is Big Data supposed to serve?

The discussion also looked at questions such as who is this data for? Janata Information System (JIS), is a concept developed by MKSS where the data collected and generated by the government is taken to be for the common citizens. For e.g. MNREGA data should be used to serve the purposes of the labourers. The raw data as is available at the moment, usually cannot be used by the common man as it is so vast and full of information that is not useful for them at all. It was pointed out that while using Big Data for policy planning purposes, the actual string of information that turned out to be needed was very little but the task of unravelling this data for civil society purposes is humongous. By presenting the data in the right manner, the individual can be empowered. The importance of data presentation was also flagged. It was agreed upon that the content of the data should be for the labourer and not a MNC, as the MNC has the capability to utilise the raw data on it’s own regardless.

Concerns about Big Data usage

Participants pointed out that privacy concerns are usually brushed under the table due to a belief that the law is sufficient or that the privacy battle has already been lost.
In the absence of knowledge of domain and context, Big Data analysis is quite limited. Big Data’s accuracy and potential to solve problems needs to be factually backed.
The narrative of Big Data often rests on the assumption that descriptive statistics take over inferential statistics, thus eliminating the need for domain specific knowledge. It is claimed that the data is so big that it will describe everything that we need to know.
Big Data is creating a shift from a deductive model of scientific rigour to an inductive one. In response to this, a participant offered the idea that troves of good data allow us to make informed questions on the basis of which the deductive model will be formed. A hybrid approach combining both deductive and inductive might serve us best.
The need to collect the right data in the correct format, in the right place was also expressed.

Potential Research Questions & Participants’ Areas of Research

Following this discussion, participants brainstormed to come up with potential areas of research and research questions. They have been captured below:

Big Data, Aadhaar and India Stack:

Has Aadhaar been able to tackle illegal ways of claiming services or are local negotiations and other methods still prevalent?
Is the consent layer of India Stack being developed in a way that provides an opportunity to the UID user to give informed consent? The OpenPDS and its counterpart in the EU i.e. the My Data Structure were designed for countries with strong privacy laws. Importantly, they were meant for information shared on social media and not for an individual’s health or credit history. India is using it in a completely different sphere without strong data protection laws. What were the granular consent layer structures present in the West designed for and what were they supposed to protect?
The question of ownership of data needs to be studied especially in context of a globalised world where MNCs are collecting copious amounts of data of Indian citizens. What is the interaction of private parties in this regard?

Big Data and Predictive Policing:

How are inequalities being created through the Big Data systems? Lessons should be taken from the Western experience with the advent of predictive policing and other big data techniques - they tend to lead to perpetuation of the current biases which are already ingrained in the system.
It was also pointed out how while studying these topics and anything related to technology generally, we become aware of a divide that is present between the computational sciences and social sciences. This divide needs to be erased if Big Data or any kind of data is to be used efficiently. There should be a cross-pollination between different groups of academics. An example of this can be seen to be the ‘computational social sciences departments’ that have been coming up in the last 3-4 years.
Why are so many interim promises made by Big Data failing? A study of this phenomenon needs to be done from a social science perspective. This will allow one to look at it from a different angle.

Studying Big Data:

What is the historical context of the terms of reference being used for Big Data? The current Big Data debate in India is based on parameters set by the West. For better understanding of Big Data, it was suggested that P.C. Mahalanobis’ experience while conducting the Indian census, (which was the Big Data of that time) can be looked at to get a historical perspective on Big Data. This comparison might allow us to discover questions that are important in the Indian context. It was also suggested that rather than using ‘Big Data’ as a catchphrase to describe these new technological innovations, we need to be more discerning.
What are the ideological aspects that must be considered while studying Big Data? What does the dialectical promise of technology mean? It was contended that every time there is a shift in technology, the zeitgeist of that period is extremely excited and there are claims that it will solve everything. There’s a need to study this dialectical promise and the social promise surrounding it.
Apart from the legitimate fears that Big Data might lead to exclusion, what are the possibilities in which it improve inclusion too?
The diminishing barrier between the public and private self, which is a tangent to the larger public-private debate was mentioned.
How does one distinguish between technology failure and process failure while studying Big Data?

Big Data: A Friend?

In the concluding session, the fact that the Big Data moment cannot be wished away was acknowledged. The use of analytics and predictive modelling by the private sector is now commonplace and India has made a move towards a database state through UID and Digital India. The need for a nuanced debate, that does away with the false equivalence of being either a Big Data enthusiast or a luddite is crucial.

A participant offered two approaches to solving a Big Data problem. The first was the Big Data due process framework which states that if a decision has been taken that impacts the rights of a citizen, it needs to be cross examined. The efficacy and practicality of such an approach is still not clear. The second, slightly paternalistic in nature, was the approach where Big Data problems would be solved at the data science level itself. This is much like the affirmative algorithmic approach which says that if in a particular dataset, the data for the minority community is not available then it should be artificially introduced in the dataset. It was also suggested that carefully calibrated free market competition can be used to regulate Big Data. For e.g. a private personal wallet company that charges higher, but does not share your data at all can be an example of such competition.

Another important observation was the need to understand Big Data in a Global South context and account for unique challenges that arise. While the convenience of Big Data is promising, its actual manifestation depends on externalities like connectivity, accurate and adequate data etc that must be studied in the Global South.

While the promises of Big Data are encouraging, it is also important to examine its impacts and its interaction with people's rights. Regulatory solutions to mitigate the harms of big data while also reaping its benefits need to evolve.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/big-data-in-india-benefits-harms-and-human-rights-a-report

Privacy after Big Data: Compilation of Early Research

Saumyaa Naidu — 2016-11-12T01:37:03Z

Download the Compilation (PDF)

Privacy after Big Data

Evolving data science, technologies, techniques, and practices, including big data, are enabling shifts in how the public and private sectors carry out their functions and responsibilities, deliver services, and facilitate innovative production and service models to emerge. For example, in the public sector, the Indian government has considered replacing the traditional poverty line with targeted subsidies based on individual household income and assets. The my.gov.in platform is aimed to enable participation of the connected citizens, to pull in online public opinion in a structured manner on key governance topics in the country. The 100 Smart Cities Mission looks forwards to leverage big data analytics and techniques to deliver services and govern citizens within city sub-systems. In the private sector, emerging financial technology companies are developing credit scoring models using big, small, social, and fragmented data so that people with no formal credit history can be offered loans. These models promote efficiency and reduction in cost through personalization and are powered by a wide variety of data sources including mobile data, social media data, web usage data, and passively collected data from usages of IoT or connected devices.

These data technologies and solutions are enabling business models that are based on the ideals of ‘less’: cash-less, presence-less, and paper-less. This push towards an economy premised upon a foundational digital ID in a prevailing condition of absent legal frameworks leads to substantive loss of anonymity and privacy of individual citizens and consumers vis-a-vis both the state and the private sector. Indeed, the present use of these techniques run contrary to the notion of the ‘sunlight effect’ - making the individual fully transparent (often without their knowledge) to the state and private sector, while the algorithms and means of reaching a decision are opaque and inaccessible to the individual.

These techniques, characterized by the volume of data processed, the variety of sources data is processed from, and the ability to both contextualize - learning new insights from disconnected data points - and de-contextualize - finding correlation rather than causation - have also increased the value of all forms of data. In some ways, big data has made data exist on an equal playing field as far as monetisation and joining up are concerned. Meta data can be just as valuable to an entity as content data. As data science techniques evolve to find new ways of collecting, processing, and analyzing data - the benefits of the same are clear and tangible, while the harms are less clear, but significantly present.

Is it possible for an algorithm to discriminate? Will incorrect decisions be made based on data collected? Will populations be excluded from necessary services if they do not engage with certain models or do emerging models overlook certain populations? Can such tools be used to surveil individuals at a level of granularity that was formerly not possible and before a crime occurs? Can such tools be used to violate rights – for example target certain types of speech or groups online? And importantly, when these practices are opaque to the individual, how can one seek appropriate and effective remedy.

Traditionally, data protection standards have defined and established protections for certain categories of data. Yet, data science techniques have evolved beyond data protection principles. It is now infinitely harder to obtain informed consent from an individual when data that is collected can be used for multiple purposes by multiple bodies. Providing notice for every use is also more difficult – as is fulfilling requirements of data minimization. Some say privacy is dead in the era of big data. Others say privacy needs to be re-conceptualized, while others say protecting privacy now, more than ever, requires a ‘regulatory sandbox’ that brings together technical design, markets, legislative reforms, self regulation, and innovative regulatory frameworks. It also demands an expanding of the narrative around privacy – one that has largely been focused on harms such as misuse of data or unauthorized collection – to include discrimination, marginalization, and competition harms.

In this compilation we have put together a series of articles that we have developed as we explore the impacts – positive and negative – of big data. This includes looking at India’s data protection regime in the context of big data, reviewing literature on the benefits of harms of big data, studying emerging predictive policing techniques that rely on big data, and analyzing closely the impact of big data on specific privacy principles such as consent. This is a growing body of research that we are exploring and is relevant to multiple areas of our work including privacy and surveillance. Feedback and comments on the compilation are welcome and appreciated.

Elonnai Hickok
Director - Internet Governance

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/privacy-after-big-data-compilation-of-early-research

Workshop on 'Privacy after Big Data' (Delhi, November 12)

sumandro — 2016-11-12T10:14:52Z

The Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) and the Sarai programme, CSDS, invite you to a workshop on 'Privacy after Big Data: What Changes? What should Change?' on Saturday, November 12. This workshop aims to build a dialogue around some of the key government-led big data initiatives in India and elsewhere that are contributing significant new challenges and concerns to the ongoing debates on the right to privacy. It is an open event. Please register to participate.

Invitation note and agenda: Download (PDF)

Venue and RSVP

Venue: Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29, Rajpur Road, Civil Lines, Delhi 110054.

Location on Google Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/place/CSDS/@28.677775,77.2162523,17z/.

Registration: Complete this form.

Concept Note

In this age of big data, discussions about privacy are intertwined with the use of technology and the data deluge. Though big data possesses enormous value for driving innovation and contributing to productivity and efficiency, privacy concerns have gained significance in the dialogue around regulated use of data and the means by which individual privacy might be compromised through means such as surveillance, or protected. The tremendous opportunities big data creates in varied sectors ranges from financial technology, governance, education, health, welfare schemes, smart cities to name a few.

With the UID (“Aadhaar”) project re-animating the Right to Privacy debate in India, and the financial technology ecosystem growing rapidly, striking a balance between benefits of big data and privacy concerns is a critical policy question that demands public dialogue and research to inform an evidence based decision.

Also, with the advent of potential big data initiatives like the ambitious Smart Cities Mission under the Digital India Scheme, which would rely on harvesting large data sets and the use of analytics in city subsystems to make public utilities and services efficient, the tasks of ensuring data security on one hand and protecting individual privacy on the other become harder.

As key privacy principles are at loggerheads with big data activities, it is important to consider privacy as an embedded component in the processes, systems and projects, rather than being considered as an afterthought. These examples highlight the current state of discourse around data protection and privacy in India and the shapes they are likely to take in near future.

This workshop aims to build a dialogue around some of the key government-led big data initiatives in India and elsewhere that are contributing significant new challenges and concerns to the ongoing debates on the right to privacy.

Agenda

09:00-09:30 Tea and Coffee

09:30-10:00 Introduction

Mr. Amber Sinha and Mr. Sandeep Mertia
This session will introduce the topic of the workshop in the context of the ongoing works at CIS and Sarai.

10:00-11:00 From Privacy Bill(s) to ‘Habeas Data’

Dr. Usha Ramanathan and Mr. Vipul Kharbanda
This session will present a brief history of the privacy bill(s) in India and end with reflections on ‘habeas data’ as a lens for thinking and actualising privacy after big data.

11:00-11:30 Tea and Coffee

11:30-12:30 Digital ID, Data Protection, and Exclusion

Ms. Amelia Andersdotter and Mr. Srikanth Lakshmanan
This session will discuss national centralised digital ID systems, often operating at a cross-functional scale, and highlight its implications for discussions on data protection, welfare governance, and exclusion from public and private services.

12:30-13:30 Digital Money and Financial Inclusion

Dr. Anupam Saraph and Ms. Astha Kapoor
This session will focus on the rise of digital banking and online payments as core instruments of financial inclusion in India, especially in the context of the Jan Dhan Yojana and UPI, and reflect on the concerns around privacy and financial data.

13:30-14:30 Lunch

14:30-15:30 Big Data and Mass Surveillance

Dr. Anja Kovacs and Mr. Matthew Rice
This session will reflect on the rise of mass communication surveillance across the world, and the evolving challenges of regulating il/legal surveillance by government agencies.

15:30-16:15 Privacy is (a) Right

Mr. Apar Gupta and Ms. Kritika Bhardwaj
This brief session is to share initial ideas and strategies for articulating and actualising a constitutional right to privacy in India.

16:15-16:30 Tea and Coffee

16:30-17:30 Round Table

An open discussion session to conclude the workshop.

Speakers

Mr. Amber Sinha

Amber works on issues surrounding privacy, big data, and cyber security. He is interested in the impact of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and learning algorithms on existing legal frameworks, and how they need to evolve in response. Amber studied humanities and law at National Law School of India University, Bangalore.

E-mail: amber at cis-india dot org.

Twitter: @ambersinha07.

Ms. Amelia Andersdotter

Amelia Andersdotter has been a Member of the European Parliament. She works on practical implications of data protection laws and consumer information security in Sweden, and digital rights in the Europe in general. Presently she is residing in Bangalore, where she is a visiting scholar with Centre for Internet and Society. She holds a BSc in Mathematics.

URL: https://dataskydd.net.

Twitter: @teirdes.

Dr. Anja Kovacs

Dr. Anja Kovacs directs the Internet Democracy Project in Delhi, India, which works for an Internet that supports free speech, democracy and social justice in India and beyond. Anja’s research and advocacy focuses especially on questions regarding freedom of expression, cybersecurity and the architecture of Internet governance. She has been a member of the of the Investment Committee of the Digital Defenders Partnership and of the Steering Committee of Best Bits, a global network of civil society members. She has also worked as an international consultant on Internet issues, including for the Independent Commission on Multilateralism, the United Nations Development Programme Asia Pacific and the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Mr. Frank La Rue, as well as having been a Fellow at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore, India.

Internet Democracy Project: https://internetdemocracy.in.

Twitter: @anjakovacs.

Dr. Anupam Saraph

Anupam Saraph has extensively researched India's UID number that has been widely regarded as the game changer in development programs. It has come to be linked with both public and private databases and become the requirement for access to entitlements, benefits, services and rights. Dr. Saraph, who has the design of at least two identification programs to his credit has researched the UID’s functional creep since its inception.

He has been dissecting the myths of what the UID is or is not. He has also tracked the consequences of its linkages on databases that protect national security, sovereignty, democratic status and the entire banking and money system in India. He has also highlighted the implications of its use for targeted delivery of cash subsidies from the Consolidated Fund of India. He has written and lectured widely about the devastating impact of the UID number on development programs, national security and the governability of India.

As a Professor of Systems, Governance and Decision Sciences, Environmental Systems and Business he mentors students and teaches systems, information systems, environmental systems and sustainable development at universities in Europe, Asia and the Americas. He has worked with the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Rijksuniversitiet Groningen, RIVM, University of Edinburgh, Resource Use Institute, Systems Research Institute among others. Dr. Saraph has had the unique distinction of being India’s only person who has held the only office of a City CIO in India, in a PPP arrangement with government, industry and himself. He has also been the first e-governance Advisor to a State government. Dr. Saraph has held CxO and ministerial level positions and serves as an independent director on the boards of Public and Private Sector companies and NGOs. He is also the President of the Nagrik Chetna Manch, an NGO charged with the mission to bring accountability in governance.

Dr. Saraph is also actively engaged in civil society where he participates in several environmental, resource and nature conservation initiatives, has authored draft legislations for river and natural resource conservation, right to good governance and has contributed to governance, election and democratic reforms. Dr. Saraph is a regular columnist in newspapers and writes on issues of governance, future design, technology and education from a systems perspective.

As a future designer and recognized as a global expert on complex systems he helps individuals and organisations understand and design the future of their worlds. Together they address the toughest challenges, accomplish missions and achieve business goals. He also supports building capacity to address the challenges of today as well as to build future designs through teams and effective leadership. Since the eighties Dr. Saraph has modeled complex systems of cities, countries, regions and even the planet. His models have been awarded internationally and even placed in 10-year permanent exhibitions.

Dr Saraph works with business and government executives, civil society leaders, politicians, generals, civil servants, police, trade unionists, community activists, United Nations and ASEAN officials, judges, writers, media, architects, designers, technologists, scientists, entrepreneurs, board members and business leaders of small, mid and large single and trans-national companies, religious leaders and artists across a dozen countries and various industry sectors to help them and their organisations succeed in their missions. He advises the World Economic Forum through its Global Agenda Council for Complex Systems and the Club of Rome, Indian National Association as a founder life member.

Dr Saraph holds a PhD in designing sustainable systems from the faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, the Netherlands.

Website: http://anupam.saraph.in.

Twitter: @anupamsaraph.

Mr. Apar Gupta

Apar Gupta practices law in Delhi. He is also one of the co-founders of the Internet Freedom Foundation. His work and writing on public interest issues can be accessed at his personal website www.apargupta.com.

Twitter: @aparatbar.

Ms. Astha Kapoor

Astha Kapoor is a public policy strategy consultant working on financial inclusion and digital payments. Currently, she is working with MicroSave. Her tasks involve a focus on government to people (G2P) payments - and her work spans strategy, advisory and evaluation with the DBT Mission, Office of the Chief Economic Advisor, NITI Aayog and ministries pertaining to food, fuel and fertilizer. She recently designed a pilot to digitize uptake of fertilizers in Krishna district, and evaluated the newly introduced coupon system in the Public Distribution System in Bengaluru.

Twitter: @kapoorastha.

Ms. Kritika Bhardwaj

Kritika Bhardwaj works as a Programme Officer at the Centre for Communication Governance (CCG), National Law University, Delhi. Her main areas of research are privacy and data protection. At CCG, she has written about the privacy implications of several contemporary issues such as Aadhaar (India's unique identification project), cloud computing and the right to be forgotten. A lawyer by training, Kritika has a keen interest in information law and human rights law.

Centre for Communication Governance, NLU Delhi: http://ccgdelhi.org.

Twitter: @Kritika12.

Mr. Matthew Rice

Matthew Rice is an Advocacy Officer at Privacy International working across the organisation engaging with international partners and strengthening their capacity on communications surveillance issues. He has previously worked at Privacy International as a consultant building the Surveillance Industry Index, the largest publicly available database on the private surveillance sector ever assembled. Matthew graduated from University of Aberdeen with an LLB (Hons.) and also has an MA in Human Rights from University College London.

Privacy International: https://privacyinternational.org.

Twitter: @mattr3.

Mr. Sandeep Mertia

Sandeep Mertia is a Research Associate at The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. He is an ICT engineer by training with research interests in Science & Technology Studies, Software Studies and Anthropology. He is conducting an ethnographic study of emerging modes of data-driven knowledge production in the social sector.

Sarai: http://sarai.net.

Twitter: @SandeepMertia.

Academia: https://daiict.academia.edu/SandeepMertia.

Mr. Srikanth Lakshmanan

Srikanth is a software professional with interests in Internet, follower of Internet policy discussions, volunteers for multiple online campaigns related to Internet. He is also fascinated by FOSS, opendata, localization, Wikipedia, maps, public transit, civic tech and occasionally contributes to them.

Site: http://www.srik.me.

Twitter: @logic.

Mr. Vipul Kharbanda

Vipul Kharbanda is a consultant with the Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore. After finishing his BA.LLB.(Hons.) from National Law School of India University in Bangalore, he worked for India’s largest corporate law firm for two and a half years in their Mumbai office for two years working primarily on the financing of various infrastructure projects such as Power Plants, Roads, Airports, etc. Since quitting his corporate law job, Vipul has been working as the Associate Editor in a legal publishing house which has been publishing legal books and journals for the last 90 years in India. He has also been involved with the Center for Internet and Society as a Consultant working primarily on issues related to privacy and surveillance.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/events/privacy-after-big-data-delhi-nov-12-2016

September 2016 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2017-02-06T12:51:22Z

Welcome to the September 2016 newsletter of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).

Dear readers,

Thank you for reading the Centre for Internet and Society's September newsletter. The past month was notable for the media presence that various CIS members had. Dr. Nirmita Narasimhan continued our work looking at the inaccessibility of everyday electronics with a piece in the Huffington Post about mobile applications and their low usability for persons with disabilities.

Ting-Yi Chang continued her research into the gender gap in Wikipedia, with a series of blog posts looking at the various movements and discoveries she has made about the Indian and the global context.

We are also happy to announce that CIS, in partnership with the Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy, will organize the second Internet Researchers' Conference next year.

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
CIS in partnership with Centre for Information Technology and Public Policy will organize the second Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC17) from March 3 - 5, 2017 at the International Institute of Information Technology in Bengaluru. It is a free and open conference. Sessions must be proposed by teams of two or more members on or before Friday, October 21, 2016. All submitted session proposals will go though an open review process, followed by each team that has proposed a session being invited to select ten sessions of their choice to be included in the Conference agenda. Final sessions will be chosen through these votes, and be announced on January 2, 2017. In an article published in the Huffington Post, Nirmita Narasimhan threw light on the fact that mobile applications which today form an essential part of our lives such as booking cabs, ordering groceries, making payments online, or simply connecting to friends are still excluding millions of people in India particularly the visually impaired who want to use them. Rohini Lakshané has published a methodology to answer the research questions pertaining to working statements of mobile technology patents in India, also known as Form 27, using the granted patents from the landscape. In furtherance to the Wikimedia Foundation’s 2011 editor survey which revealed gender imbalance on online encyclopaedia, Ting-Yi Chang in a blog post series (of three parts) has summarized the movements and discoveries about Wikipedia gender gap on both local (India) and global scales. In an article published in the DNA, Subhashish Panigrahi has explained the concepts of FOSS, Free Software, Open Source, and FLOSS in light of the Software Freedom Day celebrated every year. Pranesh Prakash in a response note to Unique Identification Authority of India’s (UIDAI) reply to Hans Verghese Mathews' article titled “Flaws in the UIDAI Process” (EPW, March 12, 2016) has noted that UIDAI do not illustrate the extent to which the false positive identification rates is expected to grow—neither in their initial paper, nor in their rebuttal to Mathews—whereas Mathews provides a method of estimating the increase of false positive identification rates. The article by Pranesh was published in the Economic & Political Weekly. CIS made a submission to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Proliferation of Broadband through Public WiFi Networks. Through comments prepared by Sunil Abraham, Sharath Chandra Ram, Vidushi Marda, and Thejaswi Melarkode, CIS pointed out that Wi-Fi, a radio transceiver must be deregulated further to bridge India's digital divide.

CIS in the news:

Talking Point: Futile Battle Against Torrents (Deccan Herald; September 1, 2016)
Despite SC order, thousands booked under scrapped Sec 66A of IT Act (Aloke Tikku; Hindustan Times; September 7, 2016).
The DigiLocker was supposed to cut down paperwork but less than 0.1% of Indians are using it (Mayank Jain; Scroll.in; September 12, 2016).
How does the government track all its legal cases? (Shreeja Sen; Livemint; September 13, 2016).
SpaceX Explosion Slows Facebook & Israeli Efforts To Control Online Content (Kit O' Connell; Mint Press News; September 13, 2016).
India's Aadhaar mandate for smartphone makers may rile global firms (Alnoor Peermohammed; Business Standard; September 14, 2016).
“Made in India” Innovation Policy (Prof. Collen Chien and Prof. Contreras; SpicyIP; September 19, 2016).
Is India Prepared for a Cyber Attack? Suckfly And Other Past Responses Say No (Sushil Kambampati; September 21, 2016).
To embed a tweet or not? (Vidhi Choudhary; Livemint; September 23, 2016).
WhatsApp ruling: Experts seek privacy law (Apurva Venkat and Moulishree Srivastava; Business Standard; September 24, 2016).
When the war’s on WhatsApp (Manju V.; The Times of India; September 25, 2016).

CIS members wrote the following articles

Internet Rights and Wrongs (Pranesh Prakash; India Today; September 1, 2016).
Digital India Needs These Policy Changes (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard and Organizing India Blogspot; September 1, 2016).
Glaring Errors in UIDAI's Rebuttal (Pranesh Prakash; Economic & Political Weekly; Vol. 51, Issue No. 36; September 3, 2016).
Quarter Life Crisis: The World Wide Web turns 25 this year (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; September 3, 2016).
Indians Ask: Is Visiting a Torrent Site Really A Crime? (Subhashish Panigrahi; Global Voices; September 5, 2016).
Making Telugu Suitable for Internet (Rahmanuddin Shaik; Ammanudi; September 6, 2016).
Where is the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Headed? (Anubha Sinha; Spicy IP; September 12, 2016).
Software Freedom Day: The Importance of Free and Open Source Software (Subhashish Panigrahi; DNA; September 17, 2016).
ଆମ ହାତେ ଆମ କୋଡ୍ ଲେଖିବା (Subhashish Panigrahi; Samaja; September 17, 2016).
It's September, and That Means It's Time for Software Freedom Day (Subhashish Panigrahi; Global Voices; September 17, 2016).
Who Owns Your Phone? (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; September 18, 2016).
Mobile Apps Are Excluding Millions Of Indians Who Want To Use Them (Nirmita Narasimhan; Huffington Post; September 22, 2016).
Delhi High Court’s Ruling Against Publishers is a Triumph For Knowledge (Anubha Sinha; September 23, 2016).

Jobs

CIS is presently seeking applications for the following positions

Policy Officer (Cyber Security)
Senior Policy Officer (Cyber Security)
Programme Officer (Communications)
Intern (Pervasive Technologies Project) - Application accepted throughout the year
Internship - Application accepted throughout the year
Survey Participants for Research on Musician Livelihood

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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.

►NVDA and eSpeak

Monthly Report

September 2016 Report (Suman Dogra; August 31, 2016).

►Copyright and Patent

Blog Entry

Methodology: Statements of Working (Form 27) of Indian Mobile Device Patents (Rohini Lakshané; September 14, 2016).

Participation in Events

Workshop on Innovation, Economic Development and IP in India and China (Organised by the Singapore Management University, O.P. Jindal Global University, and Renmin University of China; New Delhi; September 27 - 28, 2016). Anubha Sinha made a presentation on Investigating Limits to Innovation and Peer Production in India's Mobile Apps Economy. Rohini Lakshané made a presentation on Exploring Open Hardware in Mass Produced Mobile Phones.
Law and Economy Policy Conference 2016 (Organized by National Institute of Public Finance and Policy and Institute of New Economic Thinking; India Habitat Centre, New Delhi; September 28 - 30, 2016). Sunil Abraham served as a discussant on the "Towards a privacy framework for India" session of this conference.

►Wikipedia

Blog Entries

Wikiwomen’s Meetup at St. Agnes College Explores Potentials and Plans of Women Editors in Mangalore, Karnataka (Ting-Yi Chang; September 1, 2016).
A workshop to improve Telugu Wikipedia articles on Nobel laureates (Pavan Santhosh; September 12, 2016).
Another 5 Years: What Have We Learned about the Wikipedia Gender Gap and What Has Been Done? (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3; Ting-Yi Chang; September 18, 2016).
ସଫ୍ଟଓଏର ସ୍ୱାଧୀନତା ଦିବସ: ଆମ ହାତେ ଆମ କୋଡ଼ ଲେଖିବା (Subhashish Panigrahi; September 18, 2016). The blog post was mirrored in Your Story, Odisha Story and Aajira Odisha on September 17, 2016. The originally published piece can be accessed here.
Campaign for relicensing copyrighted books under Creative Commons licenses (Pavan Santhosh S. & Subhashish Panigrahi; September 20, 2016).

►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.

Submission

Comments on the Telangana State Open Data Policy 2016 (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; September 1, 2016).

Participation in Event

Fuel Gilt Conference 2016 (Organized by Fuel Project; New Delhi; September 24 - 25, 2016). Subhashish Panigrahi participated and made a presentation.

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Internet Governance
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►Privacy

Participation in Events

The Future of Privacy in the Age of Big Data (Organized by Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom; September 3 - 10, 2016; Berlin and Hamburg). Vanya Rakesh was one of the participants from South Asia.
LITD 17 Committee, Bureau of Indian Standards Meeting (Organized by Bureau of Indian Standards; September 23, 2016; Bengaluru). Vanya Rakesh attended the meeting.

►Big Data

Participation in Event

Young Scholars' Programme, CPRSouth 2016 (Organized by Communication Policy Research South; September 6 - 7, 2016; Zanzibar). Rohini Lakshané participated in this programme.

►Cyber Security

Participation in Event

CYFY 2016 - The India Conference on Cyber Security and Internet Governance (Organized by Observer Research Foundation; September 28 - 30, 2016; New Delhi). Sunil Abraham was a speaker.

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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:

Submission

TRAI Consultation on Proliferation of Broadband through Public WiFi Networks (Sunil Abraham, Sharath Chandra Ram, Vidushi Marda, and Thejaswi Melarkode; September 1, 2016). Shyam Ponappa and Arjun Venkatraman provided inputs.

Event Organized

7 Ways to Con/fuse the Internet with Analogy (Intergalactic Mix) - Talk by Surfatial (CIS, Bangalore; September 26, 2016). Surfatial, a trans-local collective that works with text and sound gave a talk about their essay.

Blog Entries

IIRC: Reflections on IRC16 (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; September 6, 2016)
Internet Researchers' Conference 2017 (IRC17) - Call for Sessions (Sumandro Chattapadhyay; September 23, 2016).
How Green is the Internet? The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Aishwarya Panicker; September 23, 2016).
Mobilizing Online Consensus: Net Neutrality and the India Subreddit (Sujeet George; September 27, 2016).

Participation in Event

Designathon 2016 (Organized by Sequoia India; Bangalore; September 10 - 11, 2016).
Workshop on Center for IT and Society (Organized by IIIT, Delhi; September 17, 2016). Sumandro Chattapadhyay participated in the event.

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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.

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/september-2016-newsletter

October 2016 Newsletter

praskrishna — 2017-02-06T12:52:02Z

Welcome to the October 2016 newsletter of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS).

Dear readers,

We are pleased to bring you the Centre for Internet & Society's October newsletter. The month of October was fervent for CIS as can be gauged from the number of outputs in various publications and our overall presence in the media. A research paper co-authored by Prof. Arunachalam has shed light on the contribution of Indian researchers in open access journals which has been considerably higher as against contributions from rest of the world.

Vipul Kharbanda and Elonnai Hickok in continuance of their research on mutual legal assistance treaties, examined a new approach to international bilateral cooperation being suggested in the United States, by creating a mechanism for certain foreign governments to directly approach the data controllers.

CIS also published the impact report form for receiving the Annual Plan Grant from Wikimedia Foundation.

Previous issues of the newsletters can be accessed here.

Highlights
In a research paper jointly authored by Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam and Muthu Madhan, published in the National Medical Journal of India and on the eprints@IISc repository, Prof. Arunachalam and Muthu Madhan have stated that ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID, makes research more discoverable. It helps ensure that one’s grants, publications and outputs are correctly attributed. It helps the research community not just in aggregating publications, but in every stage of research, viz. publishing, reviewing, profiling, metrics, accessing and archiving. In a research paper jointly authored by Muthu Madhan, Siva Shankar Kimidi, Subbiah Gunasekharan, and Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam published in the Indian Institute of Science Repository, the authors have raised the financial and ethical issue of paying for getting papers published in professional journals. The paper has thrown light on the fact that Indian researchers have published more than 37,000 papers in over 880 open access journals from 61 countries in the five years 2010-14 as seen from Science Citation Index Expanded. This accounts for about 14.4% of India’s overall publication output, considerably higher than the 11.6% from the world. The second iteration of Wikipedia Asian Month (WAM), a month-long edit-a-thon to create and improve Asia-related articles on Wikipedia began on November 1, 2016. Tito Dutta in a blog post revisited the stats of the 2015 iteration of the event and also spoke to Addis Wang, an organizer of WAM, to know more about their progress and preparation. CIS published the impact report form for receiving the Annual Plan grant from Wikimedia Foundation. The time period of this report is the first 6 months of each grant (e.g. 1 January - 30 June of the current year). RBI directions for account aggregator services in India seem to lay great emphasis on data security by allowing only direct access between institutions and do away with data scraping techniques, wrote Elonnai Hickok and Vipul Kharbanda in a blog post. The recent security breach in an Indian payment switch provider, was confirmed by National Payments Corporation of India. This forced domestic banks into damage control mode over the past few days. Udbhav Tiwari analyzed the developments in a blog post published by Bloomberg.

CIS in the news:

Eye on Mumbai (Tariq Engineer; Mumbai Mirror; October 2, 2016).
Indian language localization community meets in New Delhi (Mayank Sharma; Opensource.com; October 3, 2016).
An 'app'ening world (Chetana Divya Vasudev; Deccan Herald; October 4, 2016).
Changing Wikipedia’s (and society’s) male bias is work in progress (Shrabonti Bagchi; Factor Daily; October 5, 2016).
A Market Structure for Digital India (Shyam Ponappa; Business Standard and Organizing India Blogspot; October 5, 2016).
If all goes well, Indian IT Act may enter 21st century (Surabhi Agarwal; Economic Times; October 6, 2016).
Tech for the blind: How app developers can help end the ‘disturbing touchscreen trend’ (Naina Khedekar; First Post; October 10, 2016).
Tech companies like Gmail, WhatsApp may be asked to store user information (Surabhi Agarwal; Economic Times; October 14, 2016).
Here is why government twitter handles have been posting offensive and partisan messages (Danish Raza; Hindustan Times; October 15, 2016).
Digital Native: The Future is Now (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; October 16, 2016).
New regulations in place; Aadhaar Card records to be preserved for 7 yrs by Centre (Financial Express; October 17, 2016).
Govt to keep Aadhaar record for 7 years, activists worried (Aloke Tikku; Hindustan Times; October 17, 2016).
The Big Debit Card Breach: Three Things Card Holders Need To Understand (Alex Mathew; Bloomberg; October 20, 2016).
Intelligence agencies will not have open access to Aadhaar data: UIDAI chief (Aloke Tikku; Hindustan Times; October 20, 2016).
‘Entrepreneurship will become a common, respectable profession’ – 25 quotes from Indian startup journeys (Madanmohan Rao; Your Story; October 23, 2016).
Some Key Words Are Missing (Arindam Mukherjee; Outlook; October 23, 2016).
Bridging the gap: Tech giants bring the internet to women in rural India (KumKum Dasgupta; Hindustan Times; October 28, 2016).
Behind Modi’s Heartwarming Diwali Ad for Soldiers, An App That’s Primed for Political Messaging (Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty; The Wire; October 29, 2016).

CIS members wrote the following articles

Request for Specifics: Rebuttal to UIDAI (Hans Varghese Mathews; Economic & Political Weekly; September 3, 2016; Volume 51, Issue No.36). This was mirrored on CIS website in the month of October.
Love in the Time of Tinder (Nishant Shah; Indian Express; October 2, 2016).
IANA Transition: a case of the Emperor’s New Clothes? (Vidushi Marda; Digital Asia Hub; October 6, 2016).
Internet democratisation: IANA transition leaves much to be desired (Vidushi Marda; Hindustan Times; October 6, 2016).
Services like TwitterSeva aren’t the silver bullets they are made out to be (Sunil Abraham; Factor Daily; October 6, 2016).
Why Open Access Has To Look Up For Academic Publishing To Look Up (Anubha Sinha; October 12, 2016).
What Indian Language Wikipedias can do for Greater Open Access in India (Subhashish Panigrahi; Your Story; October 20, 2016).
How Long Have Banks Known About The Debit Card Fraud? (Udbhav Tiwari; Bloomberg; October 22, 2016).
How Open Access Content helps Fuel Growth in Indian-language Wikipedias (Subhashish Panigrahi; Opensource.com; October 24, 2016).

Jobs

CIS is presently seeking applications for the following positions

Policy Officer (Cyber Security)
Senior Policy Officer (Cyber Security)
Programme Officer (Communications)
Intern (Pervasive Technologies Project) - Application accepted throughout the year
Internship - Application accepted throughout the year
Survey Participants for Research on Musician Livelihood

►NVDA and eSpeak

Our project with the Hans Foundation got over this month. Archives of the reports can be accessed on this page.

►Pervasive Technologies

Participation in Events

Workshop on Innovation, Economic Development and IP in India and China (Co-organized by the Singapore Management University, O.P. Jindal Global University, and Renmin University of China; September 27 - 28, 2016). Anubha Sinha and Rohini Lakshané made presentations. The event details were published on the website in the month of October.

Workshop on Competition Law and Policy (Co-organized by National School of Law India University and the Delegation of European Union to India; New Delhi; October 19 - 21, 2016). Anubha Sinha and Rohini Lakshané participated and made presentations.

►Wikipedia

Blog Entries

Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015 round2/The Centre for Internet and Society/Impact report form (Tanveer Hasan; October 9, 2016).
UTF-8, Indic and Stub Length Article in Wikipedia (Dr. U.B. Pavanaja; October 20, 2016).
Querying Wikipedia Data (Dr. U.B. Pavanaja; October 21, 2016).

Wikipedia Asian Month — 2016 iteration starts on 1 November (Tito Dutta; October 30, 2016).

►Openness

Journal Articles

Adopting ORCID as a Unique Identifier will Benefit all Involved in Scholarly Communication (Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam and Muthu Madhan; National Medical Journal of India, Vol. 29, No.4, 2016 and Indian Institute of Science Repository; October 28, 2016).
Should Indian Researchers Pay to Get their Work Published (Muthu Madhan, Siva Shankar Kimidi, Subbiah Gunasekharan, and Prof. Subbiah Arunachalam; Indian Institute of Science Repository; October 29, 2016).

Participation in Events

OpenData Week in Madrid - OD4D Summit, Open Data Charter Meetings, and IODC16. Sumandro Chattopadhyay took part in three open data events in Madrid in the first week of October 2016:

OD4D Summit (Organized by IDRC; October 3, 2016).
Open Data Charter Meeting (Organized by Open Data Charter Lead Stewards; October 5, 2016).
4th International Open Data Conference (IODC 16) (Organized by red.es, IDRC, the World Bank and Open Data; October 6-7, 2016).

Blog Entries

(Lack of) Representation of Non-Western World in Process of Creation of Web Standards (Harsh Gupta; October 20, 2016).
Technical Alternative to Encrypted Media Extensions (Harsh Gupta; October 20, 2016).

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Internet Governance
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Not Everyone Plays by the Rules in the Digital Playground: Addressing Online Child Sexual Exploitation (Organized by International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, Singapore (ICMEC) and TULIR - Centre for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Sexual Abuse, India; October 3 - 4, 2016; India Habitat Centre, New Delhi). Japreet Grewal was a speaker.

►Privacy

Participation in Events

The Future of Privacy in the Age of Big Data (Organized by Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom; September 3 - 10, 2016; Berlin and Hamburg). Vanya Rakesh was one of the participants from South Asia.
LITD 17 Committee, Bureau of Indian Standards Meeting (Organized by Bureau of Indian Standards; September 23, 2016; Bengaluru). Vanya Rakesh attended the meeting.

Blog Entries

MLATs and the proposed Amendments to the US Electronic Communications Privacy Act (Elonnai Hickok and Vipul Kharbanda; October 20, 2016).
RBI Directions on Account Aggregators (Elonnai Hickok and Vipul Kharbanda; October 21, 2016).

►Big Data

Event Organized

Workshop on Big Data in India: Benefits, Harms, and Human Rights (India Habitat Centre, New Delhi; October 1, 2016).

Upcoming Event

Workshop on 'Privacy after Big Data' (Co-organized by CIS and the Sarai Programme, CSDS; New Delhi; November 12, 2016).

►Cyber Security

Participation in Event

National Cyber Defence Summit 2016 (Organized by National Cyber Safety and Security Standards in association with State & Central Governments, Ministry of Defence, Government of India, AICTE & Anna University; Chennai; September 30 and October 1, 2016). Vanya Rakesh attended the event.
Hakon 2016 (Organized by by Ninja Information Security Systems; Indore; September 30 - October 2, 2016). Udbhav Tiwari attended the conference.

Participation in Events

Seminar on Quality of Services in Telecom and Data Services: Issues, Challenges and Solutions (Organized by National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi; September 21, 2016). Shyam Ponappa was a speaker. This was mirrored on CIS website in October.
Free data, net neutrality: Discussion on TRAI paper (Organized by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India; Hyderabad; October 24, 2016).

Event Organized

CISxScholars Delhi - William F. Stafford (CIS, New Delhi; November 3, 2016). William F. Stafford, PhD candidate in UC Berkeley, made a presentation on "Public Measurements, Private Measurements, and the Convergence of Units.

Participation in Event

Learning through Archives: A Colloquium on Digital Scholarship (Organized by FLAME University; Pune; October 16, 2016). P.P. Sneha participated in the dialogue.

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/october-2016-newsletter

Intelligence agencies will not have open access to Aadhaar data: UIDAI chief

praskrishna — 2016-10-21T01:32:56Z

Intelligence agencies will not have free access to Aadhaar data, a top government official said on Thursday, looking to assuage fears of abuse of personal information.

The article by Aloke Tikku was published in the Hindustan Times on October 20, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which issued identity cards to 1.07 billion Indians, last month decided to retain data related to the verification of Aadhaar-enabled transactions for seven years, leading to security concerns over data safety.

As reported by HT on Monday, privacy experts expressed concerns that transaction data retained for so long could be accessed by the security establishment for surveillance on individuals without sufficient grounds.

“This fear is completely misplaced,” ABP Pandey, UIDAI’s chief executive officer told HT in an interview.

Security agencies can access the data only in case of national security after they get the nod of an oversight committee headed by the cabinet secretary. This committee has to clear every order made by the designated joint secretary-level officer before the information is shared, he said.

“You cannot have any legal protection stronger than this,” Pandey added.

Aadhaar transaction data is not only protected by the most powerful, contemporary law to restrict access but also by strong cryptography.

“Even if someone attempts, the 2048-bit encryption is so strong that it will take them millions of computers and billions of years to decrypt the data,” he said.

A vocal critic of Aadhaar’s design, Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) suggested he wouldn’t rely too much on the legal framework. “You cannot put a legal band-aid on a broken technological solution. You need to get privacy and security right by design,” the director of the Bengaluru-based research body said.

Abraham said the problem could have been averted if the UIDAI did not store the data in a centralised form. Instead, it could have used its digital signature to sign proof of authentication that could be stored by the authenticating agency and the citizen on a smart card.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindustan-times-aloke-tikku-october-20-2016-intelligence-agencies-will-not-have-open-access-to-aadhaar-data

MLATs and the proposed Amendments to the US Electronic Communications Privacy Act

Vipul Kharbanda and Elonnai Hickok — 2016-12-28T01:09:34Z

In continuance of our blog post on mutual legal assistance treaties (MLATs), we examine a new approach to international bilateral cooperation being suggested in the United States, by creating a mechanism for certain foreign governments to directly approach the data controllers.

Published under Creative Commons License CC BY-SA. Anyone can distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon this document, even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit the creator of this document and license their new creations under the terms identical to the license governing this document.

In the previous article on MLATs we discussed, in some detail, what MLATs are and why they are needed. One area which was briefly focused upon in that article was the limitations and criticisms of the MLAT mechanism, of which one of the main criticisms being the problems caused due to different legal standards in various jurisdictions as well as the time taken to process a request for information sent from one country to another. Talking specifically about the United States, where most internet companies are headquartered and hold large amounts of data, it typically takes months to process requests under MLATs and foreign governments often struggle to comprehend and comply with the legal standards in the United States for obtaining data for use in their investigations.[1] The requirement that a foreign government should take permission from, and comply with the requirements of a foreign government simply because the data needed happens to be controlled by a service provider based in a foreign country strikes many foreign law enforcement officials as damaging to security and law enforcement efforts, especially when they are requesting data pertaining to a crime between two of their own citizens that primarily took place on their soil.[2]

These inefficiencies of the MLAT process lead to further problems of foreign governments attempting to apply their search and surveillance laws in an extraterritorial manner for example in 2014 the UK passed the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act, 2014 with gives the government the power to directly access data from foreign service providers if sought for specific purposes and the request is approved by the Secretary of State or other specified executive branch official.[3] Another response that may occur is if, frustrated by such inefficiencies of the existing systems, courts in foreign states start assuming extra territorial jurisdiction, as happened when a District Court in Vishakhapatnam restrained Google from complying with a subpoena issued by the Superior Court of California, ordering Google to share the password of the Gmail account belonging to an Indian citizen residing in Vishakhapatnam.[4]

Solution proposed in the United States

In order to overcome these inefficiencies, at least in the American context, the Department of Justice has proposed a legislation which seeks to make the process of foreign governments getting information from US based entities more streamlined by amending the provisions of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of the United States (the “Amendment”). These amendments have been proposed primarily for the US and UK to effectuate a proposed bilateral agreement whereby the UK government will be able to approach US companies directly with requests for information without going through the MLAT process or getting an order from a US court.

The Amendment seeks to ensure that requests from foreign governments for information from US entities get answered in a smooth manner by including those requests in the process for seeking information under the ECPA itself. This move would no doubt, make it easier for foreign governments to access data in the US, but such a move can be criticized on the ground that it would then allow all states, irrespective of their legal standards of privacy, etc. to get access to such information. This problem has been overcome in the amendment by adding a new section to Title 18 which would allow the Attorney General, with the concurrence of the Secretary of State to certify to the Congress that the legal standards in the contracting state which is being given access to the mechanism under the ECPA satisfies certain requirements specified in the chapter (and discussed below). Only after such a certification has been received by the Congress, a contracting state would be able to receive the benefits sought to be granted under the Amendment.

It is important to note that the US administration is looking to use the US-UK Agreement as a standard to be followed for similar potential agreements with a number of other countries wherein the agencies in those countries could request information from US based entities through court orders through a properly specified legal framework. Though to our knowledge India has not been formally approached by the US government to enter into such an agreement, it is important to ask the question viz. if approached:

Does India's present legal system meet the standards laid down in the amendment to the ECPA?
And if they do, should India also seek to enter into such an Agreement with the United States?
And if India does, what could be the implications for citizens and for countries in a similar position as India?

We hope to be able to answer the above three questions, or at least throw some light on them, in the conclusion of this paper by relying upon the discussions contained herein.

Criticisms of the Amendment

While such a mechanism may be very effective in addressing the needs of security agencies in investigation and prevention of criminal activities, one cannot accept such an overarching change in cross border enforcement without analyzing the consequences that such a proposal will have on the right to privacy. Some of these consequences have been highlighted by experts responding to the amendment:

Lack of Judicial Authorisation: The Amendment requires that the foreign governments have a process whereby a person could seek post-disclosure review by an independent entity instead of a warrant by a court.[5] Although a court order is not the norm for interception even in Indian law, however under American law such protection is given to data held by American companies even though the data may belong to Indian citizens and this protection will no longer be available if the Amendment is passed.

Vague Standard for requests: Under the domestic law of any state there is usually a large amount of jurisprudence regarding when search orders can be issued, such as the “probable cause” standard that is followed in the United States or similar standards that may be followed in other jurisdictions. This ensures that even when the wording of the law is not precise, which it cannot be for such a subjective issue, there is still some amount of clarity around when and under what circumstances such warrants may be issued. In contrast, the Amendment requires that the orders be based on “requirements for a reasonable justification based on articulable and credible facts, particularity, legality, and severity regarding the conduct under investigation.” Although the language here may seem reasonable but in the absence of any jurisprudence backing it, it becomes very vague and susceptible to misuse. Disclosure without a Warrant: Under the current MLAT process as followed in the United States, a judge in the U.S. must issue a warrant based on probable cause in order for a U.S. company to turn over content to a foreign government. This requirement protects individuals abroad by requiring their governments to meet certain standards when seeking information held by U.S. companies. The Amendment seeks to remove this essential safeguard for a judicial warrant. The Amendment does not require requests from foreign governments to be based on a prior judicial authorization, since a large number of countries (including India) do not always require judicial orders for such orders.[6]

Allows Real Time Surveillance by Foreign Governments: American privacy rights activists have raised the concern that the Amendment would allow foreign governments to conduct ongoing surveillance by asking American companies to turn over data in real time. The requirements that the foreign governments would have to fulfill to execute such an order are less stringent than those which have to be fulfilled by the American security agencies if they want to indulge in similar activities. When the U.S. government wants to conduct real-time surveillance, it must comply with the Wiretap Act, which imposes heightened privacy protections.[7] The court orders for this purpose also require minimization of irrelevant information, are strictly time-limited, only available for certain serious crimes, etc.[8] In Indian law any such request, apart from being time limited and being available only for certain specified purposes, also has to satisfy that interception is the only reasonable option to acquire such information.

Process to determine which countries can make demands is not credible: Under the Amendment, the Attorney General and the Secretary of State, would decide whether the laws and practices of the foreign government adequately meet the standards set forth in the legislation for entering into a bilateral agreement. Their decisions would not be liable to be reviewed by a court or in any administrative procedure. They could make their determinations based on information which is not available to the public and the criteria for making the decision are vague and flexible. Further these criteria have been described as “factors” and not “requirements”[9] so that even if some of them are not satisfied, the certification process can still be completed.

Companies do not have the resources to determine if a request complies with the terms of the agreement: The Amendment does not provide any oversight to ensure that technology companies are only turning over information permitted in a specific bilateral agreement. For example, a bilateral agreement may permit disclosure of information only in response to orders that do not discriminate on the basis of religion, however, it may not be possible for the companies receiving the request to determine whether a particular request complies with that condition or not. The Amendment does not require that individual companies put in place requisite processes to weed out requests that may be non compliant with the provisions of the agreement; nor are there periodic audits to ensure that companies are properly responding to foreign government information requests.[10]

Non compliance with Human Rights Standards: Under international human rights law, governments are allowed to conduct surveillance only based on individualized and sufficient suspicion; authorized by an independent and impartial decision-maker; necessary and proportionate to achieve a legitimate aim, including by being the least intrusive means possible.[11] However the mechanism proposed by the Amendment falls woefully short of these standards.[12]

One must not lose sight of the fact that most of the criticisms of the proposal that have been discussed above have been made in the context of, and based on the standards of privacy protection that are available to American citizens. If we look at it from an Indian perspective most of those protections are not available to Indian citizens in any case since independent judicial oversight is not a sine qua non for access to information by the security agencies in India. Although the Amendment leaves open the question of how a request would be made by the foreign government to the individual Agreements, it may be safe to assume that were India to enter into such an Agreement with the United States, it would require the orders for access to comply with the standards laid down under Indian law before the relevant authorities send the request to the US based data controllers. At the least, this would ensure that the rights of Indian citizens currently guaranteed under Indian law, howsoever flawed they might be, would in all likelihood be safeguarded as per Indian law.

Certification from the Attorney General to the US Congress

In the above background if India were to enter into the agreement with the U.S Government apart from actually negotiating and signing that Agreement, the Indian government will also have to ensure (if the Amendment is passed) that the Attorney General of the United States, with the concurrence of the Secretary of State gives a certificate to the Congress that Indian law satisfies the requirements set forth in the proposed section XXXX of Title 18.

It must be kept in mind that if the negotiations between India and the United States in this regard reach such a mature stage that the certification from the Attorney General is required, then that would mean that there is enough political will on both sides to ensure that such an arrangement actually comes to fruition. In this context it would not be unfair to assume that the Attorney General may have a slight bias towards opining that Indian laws do conform to the requirements of the Amendment, as the Attorney General would want to support the decision taken by the administration, and our analysis shall have a similar bias in order to be more contextual.

The certification would, inter alia, contain the determination of the Attorney General:

That the domestic law of India affords robust substantive and procedural protections for privacy and civil liberties in light of the data collection and activities of the Indian government that will be subject to the agreement.It should be noted that the Amendment specifies various factors that should be taken into account to reach such a determination, which include whether the Indian government:

(i) has adequate substantive and procedural laws on cybercrime and electronic evidence, as demonstrated through accession to the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, or through domestic laws that are consistent with definitions and the requirements set forth in Chapters I and II of that Convention; Although India is not a signatory to the Budapest Convention the Information Technology Act, 2000 (which is the main legislation dealing with cybercrime) has penal provisions which have borrowed heavily from the provisions of the Budapest Convention.

demonstrates respect for the rule of law and principles of nondiscrimination;

The provisions of Article 14 as well as Article 21 of the Constitution of India demonstrates that the legal regime in India is committed to the rule of law and principles of non discrimination.

adheres to applicable international human rights obligations and commitments or demonstrates respect for international universal human rights (including but not limited to protection from arbitrary and unlawful interference with privacy; fair trial rights; freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly; prohibitions on arbitrary arrest and detention; and prohibitions against torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment);

India is a signatory to a number of international human rights conventions and treaties, it has acceded to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), 1966, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), 1966, ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), 1965, with certain reservations, signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), 1979 with certain reservations, Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), 1989 and signed the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT), 1984. Further the right to life guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution takes within its fold a number of human rights such as the right to privacy. Freedom of expression, right to fair trial, freedom of assembly, right against arbitrary arrest and detention are all fundamental rights guaranteed under the Constitution of India.

has clear legal mandates and procedures governing those entities of the foreign government that are authorized to seek data under the executive agreement, including procedures through which those authorities collect, retain, use, and share data, and effective of oversight of these activities;

India has a number of legislations which govern the interception and request for information such as the Information Technology Act, 2000, the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, etc. which put in place mechanisms governing the authorities and entities which can ask for information.

has sufficient mechanisms to provide accountability and appropriate transparency regarding the government’s collection and use of electronic data; and

The Right to Information Act, 2005 provides the citizens the right to access any public document unless access to the same is prohibited due to the specific exemptions provided in the Act. It may be noted here that the provisions of the Right to Information Act are often frustrated by the bureaucracy by using exceptions such as “national security”, but for the purposes of this write up we are already assuming a bias towards fulfillment of these factors/conditions and therefore as long as there is even some evidence of compliance, the conditions will be considered as fulfilled by the Attorney General for the purposes of his certificate.

demonstrates a commitment to promote and protect the global free flow of information and the open, distributed, and interconnected nature of the Internet.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, which regulates telecom services in India has also issued the Prohibition of Discriminatory Tariffs for Data Services Regulations, 2016 which prohibits service providers from charging discriminatory tariffs for data services on the basis of content.

Other than Indian law, the certificate from the Attorney General will also have to certify certain issues which would have to be addressed in the bilateral agreement itself, viz.:

That the Indian government has adopted appropriate procedures to minimize the acquisition, retention, and dissemination of information concerning United States persons subject to the agreement.
That the agreement requires the following with respect to orders subject to the agreement:

(i) The Indian government may not intentionally target a United States person or a person located in the United States, and must adopt targeting procedures designed to meet this requirement;

(ii) The Indian government may not target a non–United States person located outside the United States if the purpose is to obtain information concerning a United States person or a person located in the United States;

(iii) The Indian government may not issue an order at the request of or to obtain information to provide to the United States government or a third-party government, nor shall the Indian government be required to share any information produced with the United States government or a third-party government;

(iv) Orders issued by the Indian government must be for the purpose of obtaining information relating to the prevention, detection, investigation, or prosecution of serious crime, including terrorism;

(v) Orders issued by the Indian government must identify a specific person, account, address, or personal device, or any other specific identifier as the object of the Order;

(vi) Orders issued by the Indian government must be in compliance with the domestic laws of India, and any obligation for a provider of an electronic communications service or a remote computing service to produce data shall derive solely from Indian law;

(vii) Orders issued by the Indian government must be based on requirements for a reasonable justification based on articulable and credible facts, particularity, legality, and severity regarding the conduct under investigation;

(viii) Orders issued by the Indian government must be subject to review or oversight by a court, judge, magistrate, or other independent authority;

(ix) Orders issued by the Indian government for the interception of wire or electronic communications, and any extensions thereof, must be for a fixed, limited duration; interception may last no longer than is reasonably necessary to accomplish the approved purposes of the order; and orders may only be issued where that same information could not reasonably be obtained by another less intrusive method;

(x) Orders issued by the Indian government may not be used to infringe freedom of speech;

(xi) The Indian government must promptly review all material collected pursuant to the agreement and store any unreviewed communications on a secure system accessible only to those trained in applicable procedures;

(xii) The Indian government must segregate, seal, or delete, and not disseminate material found not to be information that is, or is necessary to understand or assess the importance of information that is, relevant to the prevention, detection, investigation, or prosecution of serious crime, including terrorism, or necessary to protect against a threat of death or seriously bodily harm to any person;

(xiii) The Indian government may not disseminate the content of a communication of a U.S. person to U.S. authorities unless the communication (a) may be disseminated pursuant to Section 4(a)(3)(xii) and (b) relates to significant harm, or the threat thereof, to the United States or U.S. persons, including but not limited to crimes involving national security such as terrorism, significant violent crime, child exploitation, transnational organized crime, or significant financial fraud;

(xiv) The Indian government must afford reciprocal rights of data access to the United States government;

(xv) The Indian government must agree to periodic review of its compliance with the terms of the agreement by the United States government; and

(xvi) The United States government must reserve the right to render the agreement inapplicable as to any order for which it concludes the agreement may not properly be invoked.

Conclusion

It is clear from the discussion above that the proposed Amendment is a controversial piece of legislation which will affect the way law enforcement is carried out in the internet. While there is no doubt that proposing an alternate mechanism to the existing inefficient MLAT structure is definitely the need of the hour, whether the mechanism proposed in the proposed Amendment, with all the negative implications on privacy, is the right way forward is far from certain.

As for the three questions that we had sought out to answer in the beginning of this paper, we would not like to say that Indian law definitely conforms to all the requirements listed in the Amendments, but it can safely be said that it appears that if the governments of India and the United States so wish, it would not be difficult for the Attorney General of the United States to be able to give a certification to the Congress as required in the proposed Amendment.

The other two questions as to whether India should try to opt for such an arrangement if given a chance and what would be the consequence for its people are somewhat related, in the sense that it is only by examining the consequences on its citizens that we will arrive at an answer as to whether India should opt for such an arrangement or not. The level of protections offered to Indian citizens under India law in terms of protection of their private data from government surveillance is lower than that which is offered to American citizens under American law. The growing influence of the internet is changing the citizen-state dynamic giving rise to increasing incidents where the government has to approach private actors for permission in order to carry out their governmental functions of providing security. This is because more and more private data of individual citizens is being uploaded on to the internet and controlled by private actors such as telecom companies, social media sites, etc. and the governments have to approach these private actors in case they want access to this information. The fact that the government has to approach private actors to get access to data gives private citizens some leverage to ask for better privacy protections in the context of state surveillance.

Although this proposed Amendment may not affect the local surveillance laws in India, however it would definitely have an effect on the way that citizens’ data is protected and accessed by the government.

[1] Explanation by the Assistant Attorney General attached to the proposed Amendment.

[2] https://www.justsecurity.org/24145/u-s-u-k-data-sharing-treaty/

[3] https://www.justsecurity.org/24145/u-s-u-k-data-sharing-treaty/

[4] http://spicyip.com/2012/04/clash-of-courts-indian-district-court.html

[5] https://www.justsecurity.org/32529/foreign-governments-tech-companies-data-response-jennifer-daskal-andrew-woods/

[6] https://www.aclu.org/letter/aclu-amnesty-international-usa-and-hrw-letter-opposing-doj-proposal-cross-border-data-sharing

[7] https://www.aclu.org/letter/aclu-amnesty-international-usa-and-hrw-letter-opposing-doj-proposal-cross-border-data-sharing

[8] https://www.justsecurity.org/32529/foreign-governments-tech-companies-data-response-jennifer-daskal-andrew-woods/

[9] https://www.justsecurity.org/32529/foreign-governments-tech-companies-data-response-jennifer-daskal-andrew-woods/

[10] https://www.aclu.org/letter/aclu-amnesty-international-usa-and-hrw-letter-opposing-doj-proposal-cross-border-data-sharing

[11] International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, art. 17, Dec. 19, 1966, U.N.T.S 999, cf. https://www.aclu.org/letter/aclu-amnesty-international-usa-and-hrw-letter-opposing-doj-proposal-cross-border-data-sharing

[12] https://www.aclu.org/letter/aclu-amnesty-international-usa-and-hrw-letter-opposing-doj-proposal-cross-border-data-sharing

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/mlats-and-the-proposed-amendments-to-the-us-electronic-communications-privacy-act

New regulations in place; Aadhaar Card records to be preserved for 7 yrs by Centre

praskrishna — 2016-10-17T14:46:31Z

UIDAI chief executive office ABP Pandey said that the concerns regarding Aadhar card-related benefits were "exaggerated" and that the agency will keep the records in case any disputes arise in the future.

The article was published in the Financial Express on October 17, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

As per new regulations, the government will now keep a record for seven years of all services and benefits that are availed using Aadhaar number. Fearing that the database might be used for surveillance, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) will preserve the records.

UIDAI chief executive office ABP Pandey said that the concerns regarding Aadhar card-related benefits were “exaggerated” and that the agency will keep the records in case any disputes arise in the future.

Pandey added that the information will be available online for two years and shall be shifted to the offline archives for the next five years. In that case, users will be able to check the records only for two years. However, the rules won’t apply for security agencies and that they will need a district judge’s permission to access the data.

According to HT, the rules allow designated joint secretary-level officers at the Centre to order access to information on the grounds of national security.

Talking about this Sunil Abraham, director of the Bengaluru-based think tank, Centre for Internet and Society said that once Aadhar becomes mandatory, it can be misused to conduct a 360-degree surveillance on any person.

Every time a person fingerprints and quotes the Aadhaar number, the agency concerned sends the data to UIDAI to crosscheck the particulars.
The UIDAI authenticates about five million Aadhaar numbers, which are quoted to avail LPG subsidy, cheap ration and even passport, a day against a capacity to verify 100 million requests daily, reports HT.

Meanwhile, The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has launched a drive to enrol any leftover population for Aadhaar in 22 states and UTs that have “statistically” hit 100 per cent coverage for adults.

The ‘Challenge drive’ starts from October 15 for a month, a UIDAI statement said, adding that as of today, over 106.69 crore Aadhaar numbers have been generated across the country.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/financial-express-october-17-2016-new-regulations-in-place-aadhaar-card-records-to-be-preserved-for-7-yrs-by-centre

Govt to keep Aadhaar record for 7 years, activists worried

praskrishna — 2016-10-17T01:53:24Z

The government will keep for seven years a record of all the services and benefits availed using the Aadhaar number, say new rules, prompting fears that the database could be used for surveillance.

The article by Aloke Tikku was published in the Hindustan Times on October 17, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which issues the 12-digit biometric identity to all Indian residents, will be required to preserve its record of verification of an Aadhaar number for the duration.

“This is an unprecedented centralised data retention provision,” said Sunil Abraham, director of the Bengaluru-based think tank, Centre for Internet and Society.

UIDAI chief executive officer ABP Pandey said the concerns were exaggerated. The agency was keeping records in case a dispute arose over a transaction.

The information will be retained online for two years and another five years in the offline archives, say the rules notified in September.

Users will be able to check the records but only for two years.

This restriction won’t apply to security agencies. Pandey, however, said the records would not be available to them without a district judge’s permission.

But, HT found that the rules allow designated joint secretary-level officers at the Centre to order access to information on the grounds of national security.

“Once Aadhaar becomes mandatory for all services, it can be used by benign and malignant actors to conduct a 360-degree surveillance on any individual,” Abraham said.

This is how the system, which will need millions of fingerprint-reading machines, works.

Every time a person fingerprints and quotes the Aadhaar number, the agency concerned sends the data to UIDAI to crosscheck the particulars.

The UIDAI authenticates about five million Aadhaar numbers, which are quoted to avail LPG subsidy, cheap ration and even passport, a day against a capacity to verify 100 million requests daily.

“You can think of it as Natgrid Plus,” Abraham said, a reference to the National Intelligence Grid being built by the government.

A one-stop database for counter-terrorism agencies, Natgrid will collate information real time from databases of various agencies such as bank, rail and airline networks.

“…we do not record the purpose for which an authentication request was received but only the details of the agency that sent it,” UIDAI’s Pandey said.

But seven years is a long time. Only a select category of government files are kept for longer than five years.

Asked about two-year deadline for users, Pandey said it would have been a logistic nightmare to let people access the records once the information was offline.

The Supreme Court has a ruled that Aadhaar is not a must for availing welfare schemes and is to decide if collecting biometric data for the 12-digit number infringed an individual’s privacy.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindustan-times-aloke-tikku-october-17-2016-govt-to-keep-aadhaar-record-for-seven-years-activitsts-worried

Tech companies like Gmail, WhatsApp may be asked to store user information

praskrishna — 2016-10-14T01:12:14Z

The government is moving to formulate rules that will require technology ‘intermediaries’— including email services like Gmail, chat apps such as WhatsApp and Snapchat or even ecommerce firms like Amazon — to retain user information, a development that is expected to be met with determined opposition.

The article by Surabhi Agarwal was published in Economic Times on October 14, 2016. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

What the government is looking to do now is draft rules for Section 67C of the Information Technology Act, and this will be done by a committee that has been set up for the purpose. The rules — whose drafting has been waiting since 2008 — will spell out what type of data has to be stored, in which format, and for how long, according to three members of the newly-formed committee. All this so that law-enforcement agencies can access the information if they need it.

Sharing of information between foreign firms and the Indian government has been a contentious issue, and experts said the mandate may be impossible to implement for firms such as WhatsApp that promise end-to-end encryption. Or for Snapchat – a chat app where messages disappear within seconds and are not even stored on the company’s servers.

Firms may also oppose the diktat, especially since most of them are not governed by Indian laws and also due to the high cost of data retention.

The committee is headed by additional secretary in the ministry of electronics and IT (MEITY), Ajay Kumar, and has one representative each from the ministry of home affairs, department of telecom, department of personnel and training, Nasscom, Internet Service Provider Association of India (ISPAI), along with an advocate specialising in cyber law and a few officers from MEITY. The first meeting of the committee took place in the last week of September.

“This is a fairly complex issue, compounded by the general lack of understanding of mobile apps and over the top service providers,” said a person on the committee who did not wish to be identified. This person said that most technology players are based in the United States and they have always been at loggerheads about sharing of information with the government. “Even if it is for national security reasons, how much are these companies answerable to the Indian security establishment? And we do know how Apple refused to unlock the phone even for FBI."

Google and Facebook did not respond to requests for comment.

‘Huge balancing act’

Supreme Court lawyer and cyber law expert Pavan Duggal said the section has been drafted in very “broad” terms and the move may be driven by the realisation that these companies are huge data repositories – some of which might be relevant to law enforcement investigations. “It will have to be a huge balancing act and will be interesting to see what this committee decides,” added Duggal.

While Section 67C refers to the obligation of the service providers to retain information, the nature of the data to be retained and the time period is not specified. Companies which do not comply with the law can be levied fine and its officers sent to jail.

Another member on the committee said the ambit of this task is huge. “In the last meeting we argued that the rules should be the same for everybody and there should be no differential treatment for foreign companies such as Google or Microsoft,” he said. This person said that ambiguity is rampant as various government arms have different sets of rules for data retention.

For instance, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) asks for data to be stored for six months, while the Registrar of Companies mandates some information to be retained for one year while the income-tax rules mandate data storage for six-seven years. “There has only been one meeting so far. It is a long procedure and will require several rounds of consultation,” said a third person on the committee.

Privacy activists like Pranesh Prakash of the Centre for Internet and Society said that one of the principles that’s frequently cited while discussing international practices on surveillance is that data retention should not be required of service providers.

And internationally too, there is no standard on this issue. “There were norms at the European Union-level regarding data retention, but they were struck down in 2014 by the European Court of Justice as being violative of human rights,” he said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-october-14-2016-surabhi-agarwal-tech-companies-like-gmail-whatsapp-may-be-asked-to-store-user-information

Grants:APG/Proposals/2014-2015 round2/The Centre for Internet and Society/Impact report form

hasan — 2016-10-09T14:40:36Z

This form is for organizations receiving Annual Plan Grants to report on their results to date. For progress reports, the time period for this report will the first 6 months of each grant (e.g. 1 January - 30 June of the current year). For impact reports, the time period for this report will be the full 12 months of this grant, including the period already reported on in the progress report (e.g. 1 January - 31 December of the current year).

Read the original published on Wikimedia Blog here.

This form includes four sections, addressing global metrics, program stories, financial information, and compliance. Please contact APG/FDC staff if you have questions about this form, or concerns submitting it by the deadline. After submitting the form, organizations will also meet with APG staff to discuss their progress.

Global metrics overview - all programs

We are trying to understand the overall outcomes of the work being funded across our grantees' programs. Please use the table below to let us know how your programs contributed to the Global Metrics. We understand not all Global Metrics will be relevant for all programs, so feel free to put "0" where necessary. For each program include the following table and

Next to each required metric, list the outcome achieved for all of your programs included in your proposal.
Where necessary, explain the context behind your outcome.
In addition to the Global Metrics as measures of success for your programs, there is another table format in which you may report on any OTHER relevant measures of your programs success.

For more information and a sample, see Global Metrics.

Overall

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	157	CIS-A2K has been able to increase participation of female editors across its Focus Language Areas.
2. # of new editors	799	Our WEP initiatives have helped in introducing and retaining editors across FLA (except for Odia).
3. # of individuals involved	1200	Public events and anniversary celebrations held in Odia and Kannada have helped Wikimedia projects in reaching the general public as these events have been widely covered by media.
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	2823	Photo-walks, WEP activities and image re-licensing efforts have helped the A2K team in achieving this metric.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	18998	Thematic edit-a-thons anchored by A2K and Collaborative edit-a-thons that have been supported by A2K have been a big hit during the last grant period amongst Indic Wikimedians.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	109.64 MB

Kannada

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	23	As of now the Kannada community is relatively small, A2K would like to expand the user and editor base by taking Wikimedia activities to various parts of the state.
2. # of new editors	609	These numbers include new editors from WEP initiative and editathons conducted as part of 13 Kannada Wikipedia anniversary.
3. # of individuals involved	700	Public event organised during the 13th Kannada Wikipedia anniversary has boosted our reach.
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	1290	Due to the Photo walk organised as part of the 13th year Kannada Wikipedia anniversary celebrations.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	8132	Most of the articles created under WEP initiative are still under sandbox (as a quality enforcing measure), hence the number is low. The number also includes Wikisource folios.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	56.5 MB

Konkani

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	4	Activities in Konkani Wikipedia dipped after the project became live.
2. # of new editors	20	The new editors were introduced to Konkani Wikipedia with the help of Nirmala Institute of Education, Panjim an institutional partner of CIS-A2K.
3. # of individuals involved	50
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	34
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	1546	Konkani Wikipedians took the project of creating one article per village in Goa quite enthusiatically.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	8.11 MB

Marathi

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	64	Events conducted at Pune University, Pune and IIT-Bombay involved existing Wikipedians.
2. # of new editors	59	Activities conducted at SWERI, Pandharpur, TISS, Mumbai and IIT-Mumbai have contributed to this.
3. # of individuals involved	150	Involvement of Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Limited opened up new readership to get involved in Marathi Wikimedia projects.
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	27	A2K team could not organise a dedicated photo walk or invest in image re-licensing activity.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	331	Although the number of the articles is low, many new female editors were introduced and have taken up editing on Marathi Wikipedia.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	2.64 MB

Odia

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	21	Wiki Tungi activities are lead by active Wikimedians from the Odia community.
2. # of new editors	56	Nabakalebara edit-a-thon gained a lot of currency on the social media platforms which in turn resulted in new editors for Odia Wikimedia projects.
3. # of individuals involved	120	Three events with Puri WikiTungi (Puri Workshop, 15th Anniversary celebration, and Mission Odisha event), Wikipedia workshop in Utkal University.
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	601	Nabakalebara edit-a-thon had an in-built component of adding images related to the Rathayatra.
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	1780	Only pages created in Odia Wikipedia and Odia Wikisource are indicated and not article improved.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	9.56 MB

Telugu

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	30
2. # of new editors	45	Need to try getting more New users on to the board.
3. # of individuals involved	150
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	871
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	1342	Includes folios digitized in Wikisource.
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	7.23 MB

Train-a-Wikipedian

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	15	Editors who have participated in at least one training session.
2. # of new editors	10	Editors who got beginners' training (includes account creation and basic Wikipedia training such as Wikiformatting, components of Wikipedia, article structure).
3. # of individuals involved	30	#1+#2 and the people who were involved during training sessions.
4. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	5867
5. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	25.6 MB

Telling your program stories - all programs

Please tell the story of each of your programs included in your proposal. This is your chance to tell your story by using any additional metrics (beyond global metrics) that are relevant to your context, beyond the global metrics above. You should be reporting against the targets you set at the beginning of the year throughout the year. We have provided a template here below for you to report against your targets, but you are welcome to include this information in another way. Also, if you decided not to do a program that was included in your proposal or added a program not in the proposal, please explain this change. More resources for storytelling are at the end of this form. Here are some ways to tell your story.

We encourage you to share your successes and failures and what you are learning. Please also share why are these successes, failures, or learnings are important in your context. Reference learning patterns or other documentation.

Make clear connections between your offline activities and online results, as applicable. For example, explain how your education program activities is leading to quality content on Wikipedia.

We encourage you to tell your story in different ways by using videos, sound files, images (photos and infographics, e.g.), compelling quotes, and by linking directly to work you produce. You may highlight outcomes, learning, or metrics this way.

We encourage you to continue using dashboards, progress bars, and scorecards that you have used to illustrate your progress in the past, and to report consistently over time.

You are welcome to use the table below to report on any metrics or measures relevant to your program. These may or may not include the global metrics you put in the overview section above. You can also share your progress in another way if you do not find a table like this useful.

A2K key activities

During this grant period CIS-A2K has organized and supported a number of events in collaboration with Indic Wikimedia community members. Some of those are:

July 2015	August 2015	September 2015
Konkani Wikipedia goes live, (See more)	Telugu Wikipedia edit-a-thon at Annamacharya library Tulu Wikipedia edit-a-thon in Mangalore (See more)	Seminar on "Empowering Marathi Schools", Pune, Kannda Wikipedia meetup (See more)
October 2015	November 2015	December 2015
Konkani language book donation (See more)	4 Indic language communities IRC meeting, Community discussion for making Tulu Wikipedia live (See more)	Sau Dhuni Teen Project: December Wikipedia Edit-a-thon, Initiative to bring 1000 books about the culture of Maharashtra on Marathi Wikipedia (See more)
January 2016	February 2016	March 2016
Konkani-language Edit-a-thon and English-Romi Konkani dictionary release, Geographical Indications in India Edit-a-thon (See more)	Digitisation sprint at Andhra Loyola College, Kannada Wikipedia's 13th anniversary (See more)	(See more) National Wikipedia Education review program, Odia-language Women’s History Month edit-a-thons (See more)
April 2016	May 2016	June 2016
Odia Wikipedia's 14th anniversary (See more)	Mini TTT and MWT in Pune, Advanced training for Kannada-language Wikimedians (See more)	Train the Trainer 2016, MediaWiki Training (See more)

Capacity building

Train the Trainer

Train the Trainer (or TTT in short) is a residential program that attempts to groom leadership skills among the Indian Wikimedians. Participating Wikimedians interact with A2K staff members and community leaders towards designing, implementing and documenting activities such as outreach, GLAM projects, edit-a-thons, etc. Various topics such as grants' structure, funding opportunities both with A2K and WMF, effective reporting and documentation, use of Global and other metrics, etc., are also covered.

After the first 2 iterations in 2013 and 2015, the third iteration of the training program was conducted in June 2016.

Diversity

In this iteration—

Language: 16 Wikimedians from 10 different language communities participated as shown in the pie chart below.

Participants of TTT 2016, representing different language communities

Gender: This year we had 5 female participants (out of 15 participants). After the 2013 iteration we felt we should try to encourage more female Wikipedians to participate in TTT. However, this does not mean that we had any different eligibility criteria set for the female Wikipedians.

Participants division by gender

Representation of Indic Wikimedia communities: We had participants from all over India. Although TTT is a national-level event, we also had participants from outside of India (Nepal and Sri Lanka).

Lessons learnt

TTT 2016 participants

After the 2015 version we found that a few participants faced difficulties to understand and work on the pre-event presentations. This year (2016), we have given more detailed instructions and were in touch with the participants while they were doing pre-event works.
By dovetailing TTT and MWT, A2K team was able to bring Indic Wikimedians working for outreach and on technical front together. This helped the participants to create a wishlist regarding tools, gadgets, and other technical help required to conduct effective outreach activities.

Based on participants' feedback and suggestions plus our own observations, while keeping Wikimedia Foundation's guidelines in mind, we make necessary changes to our program structure. In this year's TTT we made a number of changes‖

We encouraged more eligible female editors to participate.
We found that the objective and aims of the event remained unclear to a few participants in the earlier iterations. This year we have given more attention to explain the program's objectives, aims and expectations.

Challenges

We expected that the participants would be in touch with us while planning, conducting, and making reports of an event. After 2015 TTT^[1] we found a few participants did not respond to our emails or messages.
While TTT 2016 participants have shown active interest during WCI-related edit-a-thon, the same level of interest was not seen during regular monthly meetups.
Despite having communicated to the TTT 2015 participants that a mini TTT should be organized in their communities, however this was not taken up actively.

Mediawiki Training

Participants of MWT 2016, during the workshop

MediaWiki Training (MWT) is an annual residential training workshop that intends to bridge the prevalent gap between outreach volunteers and MediaWiki volunteers and developers. MWT attempts to create and groom 'tech' leaders from the existing Indian language Wikipedians. It aims to facilitate discussions around nurturing leadership regarding technical issues such as filing bugs that hinder the growth of Indian language Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects. At the same time, it encourages active contribution towards improving the existing MediaWiki software from the participants to understand importance of utilizing technology for outreach activities.

The first iteration of the event was held on 24-27 June 2015. 14 editors from 8 Indic communities participated in this workshop. Some of the topics taught during the workshop were: Bugs -presentation, demo & case study, Bots - Pywiki & AWB, MediaWiki tools, TranslateWiki, Quarry, WikiMetrics, APIs, User scripts.

The second iteration of the workshop was conducted on 17-19 June 2016 in Bangalore. MWT 2016 was planned to facilitate an idea-exchange platform between outreach volunteers and MWT participants. 11 editors from 6 Indic Wikimedia communities recieved training during this workshop. Some of the topics discussed during the program were Wikidata, usage of Wikimedia labs tools, templates and infobox creation, as well as AutoWikiBrowser (AWB).

Lessons learnt

Ensure better logistics co-ordination thus guaranteeing involved participation from the participants.
Priority topics must be given more time.

Challenges

Scheduling follow-up events such as mini version of MWT across Indic Wikimedia communities.
To identify female Wikimedians and encourage them to participate in MWT.

Train-a-Wikipedian

Train-a-Wikipedian session in Hyderabad on 15 May 2016

Train-a-Wikipedian (TAW) was started in December 2015 to identify enthusiastic Indic Wikipedians, to train and groom them to develop their editing skills. Inspired by the Adopt-a-User program of the English-language-Wikipedia, this initiative is working on encouraging new Wikimedians who nominate themselves to learn basic Wikimedia policies. Until 30 June 2016, more than 25 training sessions have been conducted.

The concept of Train-a-Wikipedian was appreciated by several Indic Wikimedians from different communities.
More than 25 Wikimedians signed up for this program.

Reflections

These are some of the reflections/feedback we received from Train-a-Wikipedian participants:

Username

	Community	Topics/Learnings	Feedback/Reflections
User:Nrgullapalli (Training page)	Telugu Wikipedia	Policy discussion such as civility, stub, How to search in a better way using operators etc on the web to get references Introduction to The Wikipedia Library / Resource exchange / CIS-A2K Resource exchange.	“ The training was helpful, I learned a couple of new tools. But I feel such trainings should be conducted on regular basis and follow-ups should be done. ”
User:Mouryan (Training page)	Bengali Wikipedia	Essentials of conducting local Wiki-event. Using special pages such as Special:UncategorizedPages,, Special:ShortPages etc., Google Books citation, Metrics.wikimedia.org	“ It was amazing and a quite enriching experience for me at a personal level sir. The things I learnt at Train-a-Wikipedian Hyderabad actually paid the results soon enough.and it enabled to successfully conduct my first offline Wikipedia Meetup in Kolkata just within one month's time. . . ”
User:Rajasekhar1961 (Training page)	Telugu Wikipedia	AdminTools such as MoreMenu, QuickWikiEditor, Citation making using Google Books citation tool, autofilling (from reftoolbar), DOI citation tool; Quick Page purging	“ I picked up some very useful skills & learnt good tools. But, I became a little inactive after that so could not utilize these learnings much. I hope to do so in future.

Lessons learnt

This initiative was inspired by English Wikipedia's program Adopt-a-user, however we found that we must make necessary changes to meet requirements of Indic Wikimedians.
Real-life training sessions left a deeper impact and motivated Wikimedians much more than online training modules.

Challenges

We failed to conduct sufficient number of offline training sessions.
Follow-ups have not been done for a couple of workshops, for example a TAW workshop was conducted in Hyderabad on 15 May and was well-received, but no follow-up TAW workshop has been conducted since then in the city.
From A2K's side sometimes there were delays in connecting and co-ordinating with the signed-up participants. On the other hand sometimes, we did not got responses from the participants when we contacted them.

Policies and guidelines on Indic Wikipedias

Indic Wikipedia policy handbook

CIS-A2K started working on a project to support and encourage Indic Wikipedians to create and/or localize policies in their native languages. A survey was conducted and a policy handbook was also created.

Lessons learnt

Efforts must be taken to initiate discussion regarding creation, localisation of policies in events organized by A2K

Challenges

Although a few policy-discussion meetups have been conducted (such as this one), we faced difficulties finding volunteer translators to translate the handbook into Indic languages.

Play media

Dr. Soubhagyavathi talks about Kannada Wikipedia

Kannada

Kannada Wikipedia Edit-a-thon partcipants at DSERT in January 2016

Kannada Wikipedia has reached the 20,000 article mark during this year. Kananda community members collaboratively designed the plan for the 13th Kannada Wikipedia anniversary. This activity brought together Wikimedians from different parts of Karnataka. By applying for a PEG Kannada Wikipedians have interacted with global Wikipedians and WMF staff. This event resulted in new editors and outreach activities in various parts of Karnataka. A2K has appointed a Program Associate as per its revised strategy A2K 2.0 for Kannada Wikimedia projects.

Institutional partnership

Two new partnerships have been initiated during this grant period–

The Department of State Educational Research and Training (DSERT), Government of Karnataka and
Alva's Education Foundation at Moodabidri.

While Alva's Education Foundation is going to be a partner in implementing Wikipedia Education Program. DSERT is an institution that trains school teachers all across Karnataka state. A2K will be training the trainers about using and editing Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects in the context of their classroom. However, the 3 other institutional partnerships - Karnataka Janapada University, Manjusha Museum, Dharmasthala, and Tumkur University, Tumkur- that were anticipated during the writing of workplan, could not materialize. This was due to the delay in recruiting a Program Associate for the Kannada Wikimedia projects.

A2K has successfully continued its earlier partnerships and has benefited from their advice regarding our WEP activities and workplan.

Awareness and Outreach

Both the DSERT partnership and the 13th anniversary helped raise awareness around thematic article writing which encouraged Kannada Wikipedians to engage in projects. Various editing projects on literature, science, engineering subjects were taken up actively by the community members. Approximately 225 articles were created exclusively as part of 13th year anniversary celebrations.

Offline versions of Kannada Wikipedia (using kiwix) were distributed through flash drives like this during 13th year Kannada Wikipedia anniversary

CIS-A2K also tried to engage in skill-building activities for the Kannada community members. As per the requests from volunteers, capacity building programs were arranged both in groups and in one-on-one settings to individual Wikimedians. Both TTT and MWT saw active participation from Kannada community. The results of these would be visible in the coming months.

In order to increase the offline readership of Kannada Wikipedia, offline versions of Kannada Wikipedia (using kiwix) were distributed through flash drives during 13th year Kannada Wikipedia anniversary held at Mangalore. 50 such flash drives have been distributed so far to those in need.

Lessons learnt

Kannada was not properly represented in terms of blogs and media coverage and we have been working on addressing this issue.
A better communication method would be devised with inputs from the community members.

Gating factors

A2K has not been successful towards re-releasing of textbooks published by the Government of Karnataka under CC-by-SA licences.

An orientation for Kananda bloggers, some of who could be potential Wikimedians, has not taken place.
Some community members have repeatedly emphasized on having better communication, documentation of activities taken up by the Program Associate.

Odia

Active editors in Odia Wikipedia during the period July 2015 to Feb 2016

Through the community building activities such as the formation of Puri WikiTungi and revival of Bhubaneswar WikiTungi, active editors of the Odia Wikipedia movement reached 30 editors (as of 30 June 2016). Regular follow-up with Wikimedians on-Wiki and via different social media channels along with monthly meetups has helped in editor retention. This has further encouraged Odia Wikimedians to participate in both on-Wiki and off-Wiki activities.

CIS-A2K has supported the community to celebrate the 14th Anniversary of Odia Wikipedia, which facilitated 30 Wikimedians to meet and discuss the future activities for Odia Wikimedia projects.

Formation of Puri WikiTungi

Play media

Adyasha Sahu a Wikimedian from Puri community sharing her journey in the Wikimedia movement.

Puri WikiTungi is a city-based editing group formed by Wikimedians from Puri to spread awareness about Odia Wikimedia projects in and around the city. This group was formed after the first Wikipedia workshop in Puri. Around 30 individuals attended the workshop. 14 participants from this workshop have emerged as active editors on Odia Wikipedia and Odia Wikisource. They are also involved in conducting offline meet-ups, seminar and workshops.

Bridging the Gender gap

Gender diversity in Odia Wikimedia community during 2014-16. For this statistics Odia Wikipedia and Odia Wikisource have been considered.

CIS-A2K has engaged with seven new female Wikipedians and this has resulted in their active participation on Odia Wikimedia projects. One of the female Wikmedians, Chinmayee Mishra has independently conducted a Wikipedia orientation workshop. This workshop has boosted participation of female Wikipedians. Their efforts have been discussed through blog posts and other social media platforms.

Lessons learnt

Two organizations are unofficially supporting Odia Wikimedia community by providing meetup space and internet access for Bhubaneswar and Puri WikiTungis. A2K must make official agreements with these institutions.

Gating factors

Failed to build a partnership with any institution for running Education program for Odia Wikimedia projects. Awareness about the importance of WEPs is required for achieving this.

Telugu

A2K team has been successfully collaborating with Telugu Wikipedia community to improve content quality on Telugu Wikipedia and strengthen the community by increasing its reader and editor base. The team also shares ideas by providing and extending support such as involving community members in discussions with potential partners and designing programs based on their suggestions. Such collaboration has strengthened communities to conduct many Edit-a-thons which have resulted in a wide variety of quality articles. A2K intends to continue such collaborative activities resulting in improvements of stub and poorly translated articles.

Activities and Events

CIS-A2K team has been involved in conducting (holding or co-ordinating) several edit-a-thons in Telugu Wikimedia community, while a few were anchored in Telugu, others were multi-lingual. Many initiatives of the last grant period (i.e. July 2014 to June 2015) have been continued. A2K and the community have collaboratively organised an of sharing resources has resulted in which focused on improving Telugu movie articles. Community members have expanded stubs with information, references and photos. For the edit-a-thon A2K provided resources and references and the community members developed stub articles and created new articles.

Capacity building activities have also been carried out with Telugu Wikipedians. A copyrights session was conducted to improve Telugu Wikimedians' understanding on the subject and clear doubts for Wikisource contributors. Community members, Meena Gayathri and T.Sujatha, attending CIS A2K's Train-a-Wikipedian session have expressed that they gained invaluable knowledge and skills in content translation. The two later initiated a project to improve the quality of Google Translated articles. More than 30 such articles have been improved through it.

Similarly, the Quick introduction sessions held in Hyderabad community meet-ups by CIS A2K helped explain some online tools usage and enabled Wikipedians to contribute better for Wikimedia projects. One of the most active Wikipedians, Swaralasika, said that he was able to make better citations after the sessions which has helped him improve his editing.

Institutional Partnership

With the institutional partnerships established between CIS A2K and Annamayya library, Telugu Wikisource community members have uploaded some of the missing pages in on Telugu Wikisource. Due to the attempts of the community members towards proofreading these books can be downloaded now. The Andhra Loyola College partnership has also cultivated new editors and engage in WEP activities.

Outreach and Media

Increased media coverage has helped the cause of Telugu Wikimedia projects. Hard work of several Telugu Wikipedians (such as Pranayraj and Viswanadh) has been recognized and highlighted. Pranayraj points out that the media coverage helped him reach more people who want to contribute to Wikipedia.

Lessons learnt

A2K team has been working to make Telugu Wikipedia more visible in popular Telugu media, especially in printed media such as off-wiki and on-wiki events coverage in major local newspapers like Eenadu, Sakshi, Andhra Jyothi
WEP activities at partner institutions need to be synchronized with their academic schedule.

Gating factors

Technical support requests from the community were delayed on our end. To overcome this, we are trying to find interns to assign technical tasks requested from communities.

Konkani

Play media

Darshan Kandolkar talks about Konkani Wikipedia

Having gone live since July 2015 after nine years of incubation, Goan Konkani Wikipedia has developed and expanded with the help of CIS A2K to draw more contributors and resources into the project. CIS-A2K has attempted to develop Konkani Wikipedia in all the three scripts (Romi, Devanagari, Kannada). Institutions such as Thomas Stephen Konkani Kendra (TSKK) for Romi script, Goa Konkani Sahitya Academy for Devanagari script, Karnataka Konkani Sahitya Academy for Kannada script have agreed to donate content.

Department of Computer Science, Goa University, had organized an edit-a-thon to include the villages of Goa state on Konkani Wikipedia.

Due to the discontinuation of the Program Associate for Konkani, several of our programmatic activities have not been accomplished during this grant period.

Partnership

In the past year, CIS-A2K had the honour to collaborate with Mannd Sobhaann and World Konkani Centre, organizations working with Konkani language and culture, to bring in more resources into Konkani Wikipedia. These two organizations work for popularization and conservation of Konkani culture and language. Mannd Sobhaan has donated three Konkani books under CC-BY-SA license which has provided great sources for citation and references. On the other hand, these organizations have also agreed to hold GLAM activities, while A2K would digitize their archives of audio, video and text resources to further expand resources available for Konkani Wikimedia projects.

Activities and Events

A one-day edit-a-thon was organized at Krishnadas Shama Central Library, Goa in January 2016. Members of CIS-A2K participated in this event to help mentor the participants. The event created 100 new articles on Konkani Wikipedia in a single day.

Lessons learnt

Increase editor base by engaging academicians and bloggers.
Increase readership by introducing Konkani Wikipedia in primary and higher primary schools.

Gating factors

Activity in the end of 2015 was low in Konkani Wikipedia that no new articles were created in November and December.
Non-availability of a Program Associate

Marathi

Partnership

Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha (MGS) has re-licensed 1000 books on the culture, history, and literature under CC-by-SA 4.0 license in October, 2015. In December 2015, a discussion was initiated by CIS A2K at The Energy Resources Institute (TERI) to plan digitization and uploading of the books for Marathi Wikisource.

Events and Outreach

A two-day workshop was organised by the CIS A2K Program Associate in August 2015 at Srimati Savitribai Phule Pune University. This workshop was an attempt to bridge the gender gap on Marathi Wikipedia. The "Sau Dhuni Teen" project focused on creating Wikipedia articles on notable women, themes and works related to gender studies. This event attracted new editors and introduced to them input methods for Marathi methods and basic guidelines of contributing to Wikipedia. The event also served as an important initiative to utilize Wikipedia in generating Indian language annotations on academic sources in Women's Studies and the Social Sciences.

In May, 2016, CIS A2K organized a two-day mini version of Train-the-trainer (TTT) and Mediawiki Training (MWT) for Marathi Wikimedians in Pune. Topics covered in the Mediawiki training include Wikidata, bug triage, Mediawiki extensions, etc., while the TTT session focused on advanced editing skills, outreach planning, and grants structure introduction.

Lessons learnt

A strategy is required to utilize books donated by Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha (MGS) as references on Marathi Wikipedia.
Spreading Marathi Wikipedia-related activities to different parts of Maharashtra .

Gating factors

Some participants of workshops reflect that unavailability of sandboxes in Marathi Wikipedia was a concern for new editor as they were unsure if the article might be changed during the time they edit.

General Support and Service to the Movement

Play media

Odia Wikisourcer Pankajmala Sarangi shares her experience and future plans to grow the community. Video by Pankajmala Sarangi (original video) and Subhashish Panigrahi (post production), CC BY-SA 4.0. Pankajmala recorded the video herself covering a few specific topics sent over email.

Partnership Summary

Growing partnerships in WEPs: A2K team has successfully continued all the partnerships form the previous grant period and has also been able to bring new partners onboard thus adding value to the Wikimedia movement. A2K conducted a review program for its WEP partners in Bangalore during the last grant period. This review program allowed the WEP partners across 3 different states to meet and discuss the salient features of the WEP initiative being run at their institutions. This review program helped A2K team to understand institutional expectations and challenges. The review meeting also helped us to generate inter institutional collaboration and sync A2K schedule with academic calendar of these institutions.
Book/Resource donation and digitization: A2K team is immensely happy to have partnered with Maharashtra Granthottejak Sanstha which has donated 1000 books about the Maratha administration, culture, history and social life. Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation Limited, Pune has offered us in-kind support by digitising all these books and making them available to be uploaded on Marathi Wikisource.
Our collaboration with Manasu Foundation, Bangalore has also allowed us to digitise content donated to A2K for free. Andhra Loyola College, Vijayawada now hosts a Digital Resource Lab that provides nevessary infrastructure (Computers, Internet access and printing facility) for all the Telugu Wikimedians.
Centurion University, Bhubhaneswar has expressed in digitising Odia publications from the copyright lapse period. With this partnership A2K expects to add close to 50000 folios to Odia Wikisource.
Goa University partnership and Indian village articles: After a brief lull in the activities of Konkani Wikipedia activities have spiked up again mainly because of the encouragement offered by Goa University. Prof. Madhav Gadgil with support from Goa University has launched a project of using the Census of India data to create articles on Villages of India. This activity has been eagerly taken up by the Konkani community members.Encouraged by the level of enthusiasm shown by the Konkani community members Telugu, Marathi and Odia community members have also been engaged in creating articles on villages of India in their respective languages.
Partnership in image re-licensing: Alva's Education Foundation have donated more than 15000 images under CC-BY_SA license. These images depict the folk art forms, famous personalities, cultural practices, tribal costumes and other areas regarding the social and cultural life of Karnataka in particular and South India in general.
Decision of focusing on existing partnerships: Many institutions that were indicated under the category 'To be explored' for a partnership during this plan year have not been approached as A2K team worked towards consolidating its work with the existing institutions rather than crowding our resources. This decision was taken in accordance with the suggestion of community members and FDC suggestion.
Partnership re-assessment: A further re-assessment of Institutional partnerships based on the parameters of RoI, contribution to Global Metrics and community support will be undertaken during the grant period July 2016- June 2017. Thus providing the A2K team opportunity to consolidate its work further and adopting course corrections (such as working with a different Wikimedia project, changing target group, conducting intensive summer/winter camps and if necessary exiting the partnership).

Outreach Strategies Development

Online and offline media outreach strategies: Stories related to Indian language Wikipedias and Wikimedia projects used to get less attention in the regional language media in India. There has been a hike in news articles and columns related to Indic-language Wikimedia projects both in print and electronic media. One of the most important reasons behind this is the establishment and growing relations with journalists and news editors that are responsible for specific genre of news. Actively writing opinion pieces to newspaper editorials and making blog posts on popular online portals are another reason.
Laying out strategies for recruiting new contributors using social media: Learning from our past initiative experiences such as the movement where new contributors on social media helped Odia Wikisource go live^[2], CIS-A2K has been helping communities with online outreach strategies. Some of the lessons learned can be found in this learning pattern.

Other Communication and Contribution

Balance of Focus Language Area (FLA) and non-FLA language: As CIS-A2K has been working primarily in five focus languages (Kannada, Konkani, Marathi, Odia and Telugu, with Tulu and Santali as two additional languages), there has been more attention paid to the aforementioned seven languages and less on the remaining Indian languages. The same pattern also reflects in our media outreach. To balance this and to provide support in the larger Indic language community, CIS-A2K has made efforts in connecting non-FLA Wikimedians with global community leaders^[3] and writing about work accomplished in non-FLA communities.^[4]
Highlighting the' community-led projects and less-known languages: CIS-A2K has contributed and highlighting in promoting the projects that are primarily community-led^[5] that are not necessarily catalyzed by the CIS-A2K. Also, via public speaking and publications, CIS-A2K has attempted to promote indigenous and the less-known languages of India.^[6]

Challenges

Labor intensive WEP programs: WEP initiative at many of our institutions have proven to be labour intensive. A2K team has not been able to integrate its efforts with the community members. There has also been a perception that the participating Higher Education institutions are required to only provide infrastructure and carve time out of academic schedule. This leads to a situation where the A2K team is often forced to devote time and resources towards the evaluation of assignments.
Lack of institutional partnership in Odia community: Despite the A2K team's attempts to establish formal institutional partnership and further a WEP initiative in Odia language, we have not been successful. With the consent of the Odia community A2K team has approached Centurion University regarding setting up a Wikisource Learning Centre.

CIS-A2K request page

CIS-A2K has a request page intended for Wikimedian/s from India to place requests for support from CIS-A2K. Between 1 July 2015 and 30 June 2016, CIS-A2K has supported 21 such programs/initiatives. The communities supported by CIS-A2K include Odia, Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam, Bengali etc. Besides offering financial support to conduct events, CIS-A2K has also provided non-financial support such as SWAG material, and technical and documentaion support.

Some of the events/initiatives we have supported are

Odia Wikipedians conducting Nabakalebara edit-a-thon (July 2015), Odia Wikisource 1st anniversary celebration (October 2015), Wikipedia's 15th Birthday celebration (January 2016)
funding Bengali Wikipedia community to conduct a workshop (Wikiacademy) (August 2015), a meetup (October 2015), and an "in-depth Meet-up of Bengali Wikipedia editor community in Kolkata" (June 2016)
helping Malayalam Wikimedia community to organize a meet-up at Kozhikode, Kerala (July 2015), and Wikisangamotsavam 2015 (December)
support Telugu Wikipedians to conduct a photowalk and a joint Telugu-English Wikimedians’ meetup in Hyderabad (both in December)
supporting two-day workshop on Samskrit Wikisource - 2016

Lessons learnt

WMF grants opportunities should be discussed and promoted amongst Indic Wikimedia communities.
Wikimedia communities must be encouraged to optimize in-kind support such as event venue, internet connectivity.

Challenges

We have continuously informed communities that a request (specially if it is a large one) should come to us at least 3-4 weeks before the event date(s). However we have received requests at the last moment and hence faced difficulties (such as time-pressure) reviewing and process these requests in time.
We ask communities to submit expenditure details and narrative report of an event soon after its completion. However, we have faced difficulties collecting the said records in time.

Revenues received during this period (6 month for progress report, 12 months for impact report)

Provide exchange rate used:

1 USD = 61.88 INR

Table 2 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.

Please also include any in-kind contributions or resources that you have received in this revenues table. This might include donated office space, services, prizes, food, etc. If you are to provide a monetary equivalent (e.g. $500 for food from Organization X for service Y), please include it in this table. Otherwise, please highlight the contribution, as well as the name of the partner, in the notes section.

Revenue source	Currency	Anticipated	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4	Cumulative	Anticipated ($US)*	Cumulative ($US)*	Explanation of variances from plan
GSMA	INR	263,783.00	263,783.00	-	-	-	263,783.00	4262.73	4262.73
Wikimedia Foundation	INR	12,000,000.00	6,997,845.00	-	4,998,082.00	-	11,995,927.00	193,923.72	193,857.90
Kusuma Foundation	INR	15,000,000.00	7,500,000.00	-	7,500,000.00	-	15,000,000.00	242,404.65	242,404.65
MacArthar Foundation	INR	6,593,625.00	6,593,625.00	-	-	-	6,593,625.00	106,555.03	106,555.03
Cybersteward Project	INR	495,100.00	495,100.00	-	-	-	495,100.00	8,000.97	8,000.97
Big Data MF	INR	4,578,734.00	-	4,578,734.00	-	-	4,578,734.00	73,993.76	73,993.76
Privacy International	INR	3,883,300.63	-	405,388.00	3,477,912.63	-	3,883,300.63	62,755.34	62,755.34
IDRC	INR	6,751,260.57	-	-	6,751,260.57	-	6,751,260.57	109,102.47	109,102.47
The Mozilla Corporation	INR	662,173.00	-	-	-	662,173.00	662,173.00	10,700.92	10,700.92

* Provide estimates in US Dollars

Grants	Explanation
GSMA	This fund is allocated to CIS for GSMA project undertaken in collaboration with Privacy International. The research has sought to understand different legal and regulatory aspects of security and surveillance in India.
Wikimedia Foundation	Wikimedia Foundation has given this grant, as part of their APG, to work with the Wikimedia community of volunteers in India to expand Wikimedia’s Indic language free knowledge projects, including Wikipedia in Indic languages. In addition, the grant aims to generate improvements in India-relevant free knowledge in Wikimedia’s English projects and wider distribution of free knowledge within India.
Kusma Foundation Fund	Kusuma Foundation funds the core of CIS programmes.

Spending during this period (6 month for progress report, 12 months for impact report)

Please use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.

Table 3 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.

(The "budgeted" amount is the total planned for the year as submitted in your proposal form or your revised plan, and the "cumulative" column refers to the total spent to date this year. The "percentage spent to date" is the ratio of the cumulative amount spent over the budgeted amount.)

Expense	Currency	Budgeted	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4	Cumulative	Budgeted ($US)*	Cumulative ($US)*	Percentage spent to date	Explanation of variances from plan
Staff Cost	INR	5,884,320.00	986,800.00	1,328,057.00	1,695,815.00	1,455,531.00	5,466,203.00	95,092.44	88,335.54	92.9	Slightly under spent
Staff Travel & Stay	INR	985,000.00	211,267.00	162,566.00	453,724.00	-	827,557.00	15,917.91	13,373.58	84.02	Due to inclusion of Program Associates presence staff travel has come down
Volunteer Support	INR	1,530,000.00	41,847.00	422,041.00	100,631.00	764,787.00	1,329,306.00	24,725.27	21,482.00	86.89	Increased activities with the intervention of Program Associates
Meetups	INR	895,000.00	84,285.00	4,679.00	151,904.00	114,825.00	355,693.00	14,463.48	5,748.11	39.74	A2K team has conducted Train-the-Trainer and Media Wiki Training during the last quarter of the grant period. These receipts will be updated in the final cumulative financial report
Digitization	INR	150,000.00	5,250.00	-	10,250.00	-	15,500.00	2,424.05	250.48	39.74	Purchase of scanners to assist communities towards digitisation has been done
Equipment	INR	80,000.00	-	170,000.00	362,430.00	122,660.00	655,090.00	1,292.82	10,586.46	819	Essential equipment such as laptops, video camera and hard disks purchased for newly hired Program Associates and A2K staff
Assistant/Intern	INR	110,000.00	20,000.00	30,000.00	110,000.00	-	160,000.00	1,777.63	2,585.65	145.45	Hiring of 3 Program Associates has resulted in over spending
Consumables (Printing, Statinery, Swag)	INR	460,000.00	-	-	-	-	0	7,433.74	0	0	A2K was unable to utilise these funds for publishing and distributing of Community Resources
Miscellaneous	INR	165,000.00	89,003.00	21,207.00	50,978.00	50,442.00	211,630.00	2,666.45	3,420.01	128	Unanticipated expenses regarding orientation of PA
Design/Documentation & Research	INR	50,000.00	-	20,950.00	-	16,508.00	37,458.00	808.02	605.33	75	Optimal spending
Program Advisor	INR	580,800.00	132,000.00	132,000.00	132,000.00	132,000.00	528,000.00	9,385.91	8,532.64	90.9	Optimal spending
TOTAL	INR	11,979,132.00	1,570,452.00	2,291,500.00	3,067,732.00	2,656,753.00	9,586,437.00	193,586.49	154,919.80	80	Final Financial report will have the cumulative details.

* Provide estimates in US Dollars

Compliance

Is your organization compliant with the terms outlined in the grant agreement?

As required in the grant agreement, please report any deviations from your grant proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.

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References

2016 TTT version was conducted between 15–17 June 2016, and in this impact report we are reporting only till 30 June 2016. Although we have seen positive impact after this year's TTT, we are not including these in this report.
Panigrahi, Subhashish. "More Than 40 Million People Await the Launch of Odia Wikisource". Wikimedia Blog (21 October 2014).
[ Roali], an IME for Assamese language that is quite popular in the Assamese speakers, came live after long time. CIS-A2K has worked closely with the developer of this IME, some of the Assamese Wikipedia community members and Wikimedia Foundation's Language Engineering team in the entire process.
Broadening the scope of blogs CIS-A2K has contributed to the larger Indic communities has been a constant effort, though in a limited capacity. A few such blogs can be read here: 1, 2, and 3.
In this article, a community-led project for creating a script encoding converter for the Odia-language Wikimedia projects was highlighted. There were more publication in the Odia newspapers and the project was promoted on social media so that more people contribute using the Unicode standard. The latter will eventually help spread the language's reach on the Internet.
CIS-A2K and type designer Pooja Saxena submitted a paper and presented a paper titled "Bringing Ol Chiki to the digital world" at the Typoday 2016, an annual conference in India to bring type designers and script experts under one roof. The presentation is about CIS-A2K's work in bringing a freely-licensed typeface for the Ol Chiki script that is used to write Santali, an indigenous language spoken across several countries in South Asia.

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Lahariyaniyathi (talk) 17:01, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Resources

Resources to plan for measurement

Global metrics are an important starting point for grantees when it comes to measuring programmatic impact (Learning Patterns and Tutorial) but don’t stop there.
Logic Models provide a framework for mapping your pathway to impact through the cause and effect chain from inputs to outputs to outcomes. Develop a logic model to map out your theory of change and determine the metrics and measures for your programs.
Importantly, both qualitative and quantitative measures are important so consider both as you determine measures for your evaluation and be sure to ask the right questions to be sure to capture your program stories.

Resources for storytelling

WMF storytelling series and toolkit (DRAFT)
Online workshop on Storytelling. By Frameworks institute
- The origin of storytelling
- Story frames, with a focus on news-worthiness.
Reading guide: Storytelling and Social change. By Working Narratives
- The uses of the story.
- Case studies.
Blog: 3 Tips on telling stories that move people to action. By Paul VanDeCarr (Working Narratives), on Philanthropy.com
Building bridges using narrative techniques. By Sparknow.net
- Differences between a report and a story
- Question guides and exercises.
Guide: Tools for Knowledge and Learning. By Overseas Development Institute (UK).
- Developing a strategy
- Collaboration mechanisms
- Knowledge sharing and learning
- Capturing and storing knowledge.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/grants-apg-proposals-2014-2015-round2-the-centre-for-internet-and-society-impact-report-form

Internet Democratisation: IANA Transition Leaves Much to be Desired

vidushi — 2016-11-03T07:52:37Z

At best, the IANA transition is symbolic of Washington’s oversight over ICANN coming to an end. It is also symbolic of the empowerment of the global multistakeholder community. In reality, it fails to do either meaningfully.

The article was published in the Hindustan Times on October 6, 2016.

Many suspect Washington’s 2014 announcement of handing over control of the IANA contract to be fuelled by the outcry following Edward Snowden’s revelations of the extent of US government surveillance. Source: AFP

September 30, 2016, marked the expiration of a contract between the US government and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to carry out the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions.

In simpler, acronym-free terms, Washington’s formal oversight over the Internet’s address book has come to an end with the expiration of this contract, with control now being passed on to the “global multistakeholder community”.

ICANN was incorporated in California in 1998 to manage the backbone of the Internet, which included the domain name system (DNS), allocation of IP addresses and root servers. After an agreement with the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), ICANN was tasked with operating the IANA functions, which includes maintenance of the root zone file of the DNS. Over the years Washington has rejected calls to hand over the control of IANA functions, but in March 2014 it announced its intentions to do so and laid down conditions for the handover. Many suspect the driving force behind this announcement to be the outcry following Edward Snowden’s revelations of the extent of US government surveillance.

The conditions laid down by the NTIA were met, and the US government accepted the transition proposal, amidst much political pressure and opposition, most notably from Senator Ted Cruz.

This transition is a step in the right direction, but in reality, it changes very little as it fails to address two critical issues: Of jurisdiction and accountability.

Jurisdiction is important while considering the resolution of contractual disputes, application of labour and competition laws, disputes regarding ICANN’s decisions, consumer protection, financial transparency, etc. Many of these questions, although not all, will depend on where ICANN is located. ICANN’s new bylaws mention that it will continue to be incorporated in California, and subject to California law just as it was pre-transition. Having the DNS subject to the laws of a single country can only lend to its fragility. ICANN’s US jurisdiction also means that it is not free from the political pressures from the US Senate and in turn, the toxic effect of American party politics that were made visible in the events leading up to September 30.

Another critical issue that the transition does not address is that of ICANN accountability. Post-transition, ICANN’s board will continue to be the ultimate decision-making authority, thus controlling the organisation’s functioning, and ICANN staff will be accountable to the board alone.

To put things in perspective, look at the board’s track record in the recent past. In August, an Independent Review Panel (IRP) found that ICANN’s board had violated ICANN’s own bylaws and had failed to discharge its transparency obligations when it failed to look into staff misbehaviour. Following this, in September, ICANN decided to respond to such allegations of mismanagement, opacity and lack of accountability by launching a review. The review however, would not look into the issues, failures and false claims of the board, but instead focus on the process by which ICANN staff was able to engage in such misbehaviour. This ironically, will be in the form of an internal review that will pass through ICANN staff — the subjects of the investigation — before being taken up to the board.

At best, the transition is symbolic of Washington’s oversight over ICANN coming to an end. It is also symbolic of the empowerment of the global multistakeholder community. In reality, it fails to do either meaningfully.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/hindustan-times-october-6-2016-vidushi-marda-internet-democratisation

LITD 17 Committee Agenda

praskrishna — 2016-10-07T01:36:31Z

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/litd-17-committee-agenda.pdf

Services like TwitterSeva aren’t the silver bullets they are made out to be

sunil — 2016-10-06T16:31:51Z

TwitterSeva is great, but it should not be considered a sufficient replacement for proper e-governance systems. This is because there are several serious shortcomings with the TwitterSeva approach, and it is no wonder that enthusiastic police officers and bureaucrats are somewhat upset with the slow deployment of e-governance applications. They are also right in being frustrated with the lack of usability and scalability of existing applications that hold out the promise of adopting private sector platforms to serve citizens better.

Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, wrote this in response to the FactorDaily story on TwitterSeva, a special feature developed by Twitter’s India team to help citizens connect better with government services. Sunil's article in FactorDaily can be read here.

Let’s take a look at why the TwitterSeva approach is not adequate:

1. Vendor and Technology Neutrality: Providing a level ground for competing technologies in e-governance has been a globally accepted best practice for about 15 years now. This is usually done by using open standards policies and interoperability frameworks.

India does have a national open standards policy, but the National Informatics Centre (NIC) has only published one chapter of the Interoperability Framework for e-Governance .

The thing is, while Twitter might be the preferred choice for urban elites and the middle class, it might not be the choice of millions of Indians coming online. By implicitly signaling to citizens that Twitter complaints will be taken more seriously than e-mail or SMS complaints, the government is becoming a salesperson for Twitter. Ideally, all interactions that the state has with citizens should be such that citizens can choose which vendor and technology they would like to use. Ideally, the government should have its own work-flow so that it can harvest complaints, feedback and other communications from all social media platforms be it Twitter or Identica, Facebook or Diaspora, and publish responses back onto them.

By implicitly signalling to citizens that Twitter complaints will be taken more seriously than e-mail or SMS complaints, the government is becoming a salesperson for Twitter

Apart from undermining the power of choice for citizens, lack of vendor and technology neutrality in government use of technology undermines the efficient functioning of a competitive free market, which is the bedrock of future innovation.

When it comes to micro-blogging, Twitter has established a near monopoly in India. There are no clear signs of harm and therefore it would not be wise to advocate that the Competition Commission of India investigate Twitter. However, if the government helps Twitter tighten its grip over the Indian market, it is preventing the next cycle of creative destruction and disruption. Therefore, e-governance applications should ideally only “loosely couple” with the APIs of private firms so that competition and innovation are protected.

2. Holistic Approach and Accountability: Ideally, as the Electronic Service Delivery Bill 2011 had envisaged, every agency within the government was supposed to (within 180 days of the enactment of the Act) do several things: publish a list of services that will be delivered electronically with a deadline for each service; commit to service-level agreements for each service and provide details of the manner of delivery; provide an agency-level grievance redressal mechanism for citizens unhappy with the delivery of these electronic services.

Notwithstanding the 180-day commitment, the Bill required that “all public services shall be delivered in electronic mode within five years” after the enactment of the Bill with a potential three-year extension if the original deadline was not met. The Bill also envisaged the constitution of a Central Electronic Service Delivery Commission with a team of commissioners who “monitor the implementation of this Bill on a regular basis” and publish an annual report which would include “the number of electronic service requests in response to which service was provided in accordance with the applicable service levels and an analysis of the remaining cases.”

The Electronic Service Delivery Bill 2011 had a much more comprehensive and accountable plan for e-governance adoption in the country

Citizens suffering from non-compliance with the provisions of the Bill and unsatisfied with the response from the agency level grievance redressal mechanism could appeal to the Commission. The state or central commissioners after giving the government officials an opportunity to be heard were empowered to impose a fine of Rs 5000.

Unlike the piecemeal approach of TwitterSeva, the Bill had a much more comprehensive and accountable plan for e-governance adoption in the country.

3. Right To Transparency: Some of the interactions that the government has with citizens and firms may have to be disclosed under the obligation emerging from the Right to Information Act for disclosure to the public or to the requesting party. Therefore it is important that the government take its own steps for the retention of all data and records — independent of the goodwill and lifecycles of private firms.

Twitter is only 10 years old. It took 10 years for Orkut to shut down. Maybe Twitter will shut down in the next 10 years. How then will the government comply with RTI requests? Even if the government is not keen on pushing for data portablity as a right for consumers (just like mobile number portability in telecom, so that consumers can seamlessly shift between competing service providers), it absolutely should insist on data portability for all government use.

Twitter is only 10 years old. It took 10 years for Orkut to shut down. Maybe Twitter will shut down in the next 10 years. How then will the government comply with RTI requests?

This will allow it to shift to a) support multiple services, b) shift to competing/emerging services c) incrementally build its own infrastructure and also comply with the requirements of the Right to Information Act.

4. Privacy: Unfortunately, thanks to the techno-utopians behind the Aadhaar project, the current government is infected with “data ideology.” There is an obsession with collecting as much data as possible from citizens, storing it in centralized databases and providing “dashboards” to bureaucrats and politicians. This is diametrically opposed to the view of the security community.

Unfortunately, thanks to the techno-utopians behind the Aadhaar project, the current government is infected with “data ideology”

For example, Bruce Schneier posted on his blog in March this year (in a piece titled ‘Data is a Toxic Asset‘) saying: “What all these data breaches are teaching us is that data is a toxic asset and saving it is dangerous. This idea has always been part of the data protection law starting with the 2005 EU Data Protection Directive expressed as the principle of “Data Minimization” or “Collection Limitation”. More recently technologists and policy makers also use the phrase “Privacy by Design”. Introducing an unnecessary intermediary or gate-keeper between what is essentially transactions between citizens and the state is an egregious violation of a key privacy principle.”

5. Middle Class and Elite Capture: The use of Twitter amplifies the voices of the English-speaking, elite, and middle class citizens at the expense of the voices of the poor. While elites don’t exhibit fear when tagging police IDs and making public complaints from the comforts of their gated communities with private security guards shielding them the violence of the state, this might be a very intimidating option for the poor and disempowered.

While elites don’t fear tagging police IDs and making public complaints from the comforts of their gated communities, it’s intimidating for the disempowered

While the system may not be discriminatory in its design, it will have disparate impact on different sections of our society. In other words, the introduction of TwitterSeva will exacerbate power asymmetries in our society rather than ameliorating them.

The canonical scholarly reference for this is Kate Crawford’s analysis of City of Boston’s StreetBump smartphone, which resulted in an over-reporting of potholes in elite neighbourhoods and under-reporting from poor and elderly residents. This meant that efficiency in the allocation of the city’s resources was only a cover for increased discrimination against the powerless.

6. Security: The most important conclusion to draw from the Snowden disclosure is that the tin-foil conspiracy theorists who we used to dismiss as lunatics were correct. What has been established beyond doubt is that the United States of America is the world leader when it comes to conducting mass surveillance on netizens across the globe. It is still completely unclear how much access the NSA has to the databases of American social media giants. When the complete police force of a state starts to use Twitter for the delivery of services to the public, then it may be possible for foreign intelligence agencies to use this information to undermine our sovereignty and national security.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/factordaily-sunil-abraham-october-6-2016-services-like-twitterseva-are-not-the-silver-bullets-they-are-made-out-to-be