Centre for Internet and Society

DNA Databases and Human Rights

praskrishna — 2012-09-17T05:39:06Z

Using DNA to trace people who are suspected of committing a crime has been a major advance in policing.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/dna-databases-and-human-rights.pdf

Consumer Privacy

praskrishna — 2012-09-13T09:21:26Z

This chapter will examine the present legal state of consumer privacy in India and seek to understand the gap between policy and implementation of policy. In doing so, it will look at what are the existing avenues for protection of consumer privacy in India, how is the definition of consumer privacy evolving through case law and public opinion, and what are the current challenges to consumer privacy in India. Traditionally speaking, and according to the Consumer Protection Act, 1986, in India, a consumer is a broad label for any person who buys goods or services with the intent of using them for non-commercial purposes. In the typical sense, when people think of themselves as being consumers, they think about transactions with a vendor through a physical exchange of money in a store or through an online exchange for a product or service. Certain services that consumers use put an extraordinary amount of sensitive personal information into the hands of vendors.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/consumer-privacy.pdf

August 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-09-11T14:53:44Z

Welcome to the newsletter issue of August 2012 from the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS). The present issue features an analysis of the latest list of sites blocked by the Indian government from August 18, 2012 to August 21, 2012, the India Report for Consumers International IP Watchlist 2012, and press coverage related to the recent North East exodus.

Internet Governance

The Internet Governance programme conducts research around the various social, technical, and political underpinnings of global and national Internet governance, and includes online privacy, freedom of speech, and Internet governance mechanisms and processes:

Special Section on Freedom of Expression

We usually cover Freedom of Expression under Internet Governance. However, in the month of August there has been much discussion regarding the North East exodus from Bangalore and the blocking of a number of websites by the Indian government from August 18 to 21, 2012. This special section covers reportage and original content from CIS:

Featured Research

Analysing Latest List of Blocked Sites (Communalism & Rioting Edition) (by Pranesh Prakash): Pranesh Prakash did a preliminary analysis on a leaked list of the websites blocked from August 18, 2012 till August 21, 2012 by the Indian government. There were a total of 309 specific items (those being URLs, Twitter accounts, img tags, blog posts, blogs, and a handful of websites) that were blocked. In this analysis, Pranesh examines why these have been blocked, are the blocks legitimate, are there any egregious mistakes, why the whole list hasn’t been put up, why can one access items that are supposed to be blocked, what should the government have done, etc. The analysis was quoted/cross-posted in the following places: Wall Street Journal (August 25, 2012), The Hindu (August 24, 2012), LiveMint (August 24, 2012), Global Voices (August 24, 2012), Outlook (August 23, 2012), FirstPost.India (August 23, 2012), IBN Live (August 23, 2012), News Click (August 23, 2012), Medianama (August 23, 2012) and KAFILA (August 23, 2012).

Columns

To regulate Net intermediaries or not is the question (by Sunil Abraham, Deccan Herald, August 26, 2012): “Given the disruption to public order caused by the mass exodus of North-Eastern Indians from several cities, the government has had for the first time in many years, a legitimate case to crackdown on Internet intermediaries and their users.”

Social media, SMS are not why NE students left Bangalore (by Nishant Shah, First Post, August 25, 2012): “I woke up one morning to find that I was living in a city of crisis. Bangalore, where the largest public preoccupations to date have been about bad roads, stray dogs, and occasionally, the lack of night-life, the city was suddenly a space that people wanted to flee and occupy simultaneously.”
What lurks beneath the Network (by Nishant Shah, Down to Earth, August 24, 2012): “There is a series of buzzwords that have become a naturalised part of discussions around digital social media—participation, collaboration, peer-2-peer, mobilisation, etc. Especially in the post Arab Spring world (and our own home-grown Anna Hazare spectacles), there is this increasing belief in the innate possibilities of social media as providing ways by which the world as we know it shall change for the better. Young people are getting on to the streets and demanding their rights to the future.”
Censoring the Internet: A brief manual (by Sunil Abraham, Tehelka, August 23, 2012): “Blocking websites on the Internet should be proportionate to harm they intend. However, the government of India's approach is against the principles of natural justice.”
The Perils of 'Hactivism' (by Chinmayi Arun, LiveMint, August 20, 2012): “Civil disobedience includes accepting the penalty for breaking the law. Untraceable hackers are far removed from this ethic.”

Foreign Media Coverage

India blocks more than 250 Web sites for inciting hate, panic (by Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post on August 20, 2012): “A blanket ban does not necessarily lead to a reduction in the circulation of rumors because people become more vulnerable in a communication vacuum.”— Sunil Abraham.
India’s ethnic clashes intensify within social-media maelstrom (by Stephanie Nolen, Globe Mail, August 23, 2012): “Now for a change, the government has legitimate grounds to censor speech...but they’ve cried wolf on so many occasions before.” — Sunil Abraham.
India limits social media after civil unrest (by Mark Magnier, Australian Financial Review, August 24, 2012): “Before, the government’s had no grounds for censorship, it was only acting on the bruised egos of bureaucrats and officials... this time, it’s got a legitimate right given the disruption of public order. But it hasn’t done so very effectively.” — Sunil Abraham.
New Delhi Expands Curbs on Web Content (by R Jai Krishna and Rumman Ahmed, Wall Street Journal, August 23, 2012): “The government's move to block several Twitter handles is a clear case of administrative overreach...This action means citizens are less likely to believe that the government can use its powers responsibly.” — Sunil Abraham.
Govt in line of fire over web censorship (by Surabhi Agarwal, Livemint, August 24, 2012): “Both Kanchan Gupta and Swapan Dasgupta seem to be having a right wing ideology, but while the former’s account is blocked the latter’s is not...The difference is on the kind of content which has been posted.” — Pranesh Prakash.
India's social media crackdown reveals clumsy govt machinery (by David Lalmalsawma, Reuters, August 24, 2012): Pranesh Prakash’s analysis is quoted.
Internet expert criticizes Indian cyber blockades (by Muneeza Naqvi, Associated Press, August 24, 2012): “The government has gone overboard and many of its efforts are legally questionable.” — Pranesh Prakash. This was also covered in Bloomberg Businessweek (August 24, 2012), Khaleej Times (August 24, 2012), ABC News (August 24, 2012), Seattle Times (August 24, 2012), Vancouver Sun (August 24, 2012), Kansas City. (August 24, 2012), Times Colonist (August 24, 2012), Merced Sun-Star (August 24, 2012), Yahoo News (August 24, 2012), SanLuisObispo.com (August 24, 2012), Terrorism Watch (August 25, 2012), Sci-Tech Today (August 26, 2012).
How ISPs block websites and why it doesn’t help (by Gopal Sathe, Livemint, August 24, 2012): “Even though many of the items on that list do deserve (in my opinion) to be removed [...] the people and companies hosting the material should have been asked to remove it, instead of ordering the ISPs to block them.” — Pranesh Prakash.
India’s Internet Curbs Under Legal Cloud (by Rumman Ahmed and R Jai Krishna, Wall Street Journal, August 26, 2012):” The four orders that were sent to the ISPs don’t say under which section or under what power these orders are being sent...They were sent without invoking any statute or without invoking any law.” — Pranesh Prakash.
After Violence in India, a Crackdown Online (by Gardiner Harris, New York Times, August 25, 2012): “I don’t see this as politically motivated censorship...I see this as gross ineptitude by the government.” — Pranesh Prakash.
Inde: la tentative de contrôler l'internet est "illégale" (Agence France Presse, August 24, 2012): Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
India threatens action against Twitter for ethnic violence 'rumors' (originally posted by Ben Sheppard in AFP and published in the China Post, August 25, 2012): Pranesh Prakash’s analysis is quoted.
Blocked websites: Where India flawed (CIOL, August 23, 2012): Pranesh Prakash’s analysis is quoted.
India: Social Media Censorship to Contain ‘Cyber-Terrorism'? (by Aparna Ray, Global Voices, August 24, 2012): Pranesh Prakash’s analysis is quoted.
Delhi defends Internet blocking (Gulf Today, August 25, 2012): “The officials who are trusted with this don’t know the law or modern technology well enough.” — Pranesh Prakash.
India Blocks News Website Pages for 'Spreading Fear' over Assam Violence (by Gianluca Mezzofiore, International Business Times, August 24, 2012): “The government's highest priority should have been to counter the rumours and it did a really bad job of that.” — Pranesh Prakash.
Internet clamp outrage (Gulf Daily, August 25, 2012): Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
India faces Twitter backlash over Internet clampdown (by Devidutta Tripathy and Satarupa Bhattacharjya, Reuters, August 24, 2012): “This isn't about political censorship. This is about the government not knowing how to do online regulation properly.” — Pranesh Prakash.
Indian government defends Internet blocking (AFP, August 23, 2012): “I hope that this fiasco shows the folly of excessive censorship and encourages the government to make better use of social networks and technology to reach out to people.” — Pranesh Prakash. This was cross-posted in the following: The National (August 25, 2012), MSN News (August 24, 2012), StarAfrica.com (August 24, 2012), Jakarta Globe (August 24, 2012).
Criticism mounts over India censorship (by James Crabtree in Mumbai and Tim Bradshaw in San Francisco, Financial Times, August 24, 2012): “I am not questioning their original motives, but I do think this is excessive and incompetent censorship.” — Pranesh Prakash.
Facebook's Delicate Dance With Delhi On Censorship (by Mark Bergen, Forbes, August 29, 2012): “Perhaps the Indian government has wasted, frittered away goodwill...It has cried ‘wolf’ so many times that this time the internet intermediaries are not taking them as seriously as they should.” — Sunil Abraham.
Internet Analysts Question India’s Efforts to Stem Panic (by Vikas Bajaj, New York Times, August 21, 2012): “The Internet intermediaries are responding slowly because now they have to trawl through their networks and identify hate speech.” — Sunil Abraham. This was cross-posted in NDTV on August 22, 2012. A version of this article appeared in print on August 22, 2012, on page B4 of the New York edition with the headline: Internet Moves by India to Stem Rumors and Panic Raise Questions.
India limits social media after civil unrest (by Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times, August 23, 2012 and cross-posted in Channel 6 News on August 24, 2012): Sunil Abraham is quoted.
India Debates Misuse of Social Media (by Anjana Pasricha, Voice of America, August 21, 2012 and re-posted in Chosunilbo on September 4, 2012): “Social media websites and other Internet intermediaries should have been asked by the government to run banner advertising or some other form of messaging that revealed the lack of truth in the rumors that were circulating.” — Sunil Abraham.
Officials Raise Questions over Indian Government’s Efforts (by Bruce Totolos, French Tribune, August 22, 2012). “The government acted appropriately, but without sufficient sophistication.” — Sunil Abraham.
India seeks a tighter grip on social media (United Press International, August 24, 2012): Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

National Media Coverage

Internet expert Pranesh Prakash criticizes Indian cyber blockades (Economic Times, August 24, 2012): Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
Govt orders blocking of 300 specific URLs including 16 Twitter accounts (Times of India, August 23, 2012): “The blocking of many of the items on the list are legally questionable and morally indefensible, even while a large number of the items ought to be removed.” — Pranesh Prakash.
NE exodus: List containing 309 blocked URLs leaks online (tech 2, August 23, 2012): Pranesh Prakash's analysis is quoted.
Govt cracks down on Twitter (Hindustan Times, August 24, 2012): “The blocking was done without due process of law...the government should have engaged with the social media platforms since a majority — 217 out of 310 — of the block orders were aimed at Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.” — Pranesh Prakash.
Twitter users hit back at government ban (originally posted in Reuters and carried in the Hindustan Times, August 24, 2012): “This isn't about political censorship. This is about the government not knowing how to do online regulation properly.” — Pranesh Prakash.
When #GOIBlocks, twitterati fly off their ‘handles’ (Hindustan Times, August 26, 2012). Pranesh Prakash’s tweet is quoted.
Regulating the Internet by fiat (by V Sridhar, Hindu, August 26, 2012): Pranesh Prakash’s analysis is quoted.
Twitter handles: How and why govt erred and what it can do to be smarter & more effective (by TV Mahalingam and Shantanu Nandan Sharma, Economic Times, August 26, 2012): “Perhaps, for the first time, the Indian government had legitimate reasons to censor speech.” — Sunil Abraham.
Some ISPs block Wordpress domain across India (tech 2, August 25, 2012): Pranesh Prakash’s analysis is quoted.
Details emerge on government blockade of websites (Hindu, August 24, 2012): Pranesh Prakash’s analysis is quoted.
India faces Twitter backlash over Internet clampdown (INDOLink, August 25, 2012): Pranesh Prakash is quoted.
India Blocks Facebook, Twitter, Mass Texts in Response to Unrest (by Simon Roughneen, Media Shift, August 28, 2012): “In the older forms of governance, which were imagined through a broadcast model, the government was at the center of the information wheel, managing and mediating what information reached different parts of the country. In the [peer-to-peer] world, where the government no longer has that control, it is now trying different ways by which it can reinforce its authority and centrality to the information ecosystem. Which means that there is going to be a series of failures and models that don't work.” — Nishant Shah.
Tata Photon unblocks Wordpress.com (by Rohini Lakshane, tech 2, August 30, 2012): “This is not the first time an ISP has gone overboard in implementing censorship, be it copyright issues, piracy or inflammatory content. In 2006, the government had chastised ISPs for over-censoring content and blocking unintended websites and pages...ISPs have numerous grouses against the government. They do not possess the technical capabilities to implement the government's orders, at times, whether about surveillance or censorship.” — Pranesh Prakash.
Northeast exodus: Is there a mechanism to pre-screen social media content? (by Wahid Bukhari, Merinews.com, August 23, 2012): “Given the amount of content uploaded on the larger social networks, pre-screening content is just not possible, while removal upon complaint is. They don't have editors like newspapers do; importantly, they shouldn't.” — Pranesh Prakash.
Haphazard censorship? Leaked list of blocked websites in India (IBN Live, August 23, 2012): Pranesh Prakash’s analysis is quoted.
Government asks Twitter to block fake 'PMO India' accounts; site fails to respond (Economic Times, August 23, 2012): Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Videos

FTN: Is it time to regulate social media? (IBN Live, August 21, 2012): Sunil Abraham, Pavan Duggal, A Mukherji and Nikhil Pahwa spoke to CNN-IBN Deputy Editor Sagarika Ghose in Face the Nation episode that was telecasted in IBNLive on August 21, 2012. Sunil said “if one looks at the initial orders that the government sent these intermediaries those were very broad instructions. The order was addressed to all intermediaries under the IT Act.” Watch the full video on IBN Live.
Govt vs Tweeple: Has clampdown hit free speech? (NDTV, August 23, 2012): Has the Government crossed the line by ordering the blocking of several Twitter accounts, many belonging to prominent journalists? The debate was featured in NDTV on August 23, 2012. Sunil Abraham spoke to Sonia Singh of NDTV. Sunil said that “we should focus on designing of the censorship regime in the country and the lack of compliance with the principles of natural justice.” Watch the full video on NDTV.
Is the govt caught in the 'censorship' web? (NDTV, August 26, 2012): In “We the People” Pranesh Prakash responded to Barkha Dutt’s question on what does a government do in a time of social unrest. See the full debate on NDTV.

Events Organised

Role of the US Tech Companies in Government Surveillance: A Lecture by Christopher Soghoian (CIS, Bangalore, August 27, 2012): Christopher Soghoian gave a lecture on the role companies play in assisting government surveillance.
The Asian Edge: 2012 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society Summer School: The 2nd Biannual Inter Asia Cultural Studies (IACS) Summer School was hosted in Bangalore by CIS and the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society.
Biometric Identification: Specified Error, Accuracy and Efficiency, Considered for the Operations of the UIDAI — A Talk by Hans Varghese Mathews (CIS, Bangalore, August 17, 2012): Hans Varghese Mathews gave a public lecture on biometric identification.

Events Participated

Sixth Meeting of the two Sub-Groups on Privacy Issues under the Chairmanship of Justice AP Shah (Committee Room No. 228, Yojana Bhawan, Sansad Marg, New Delhi, August 31, 2012): Sunil Abraham participated in the meeting.
APNIC 34 Conference (Phnompenh, Cambodia, August 23 – 31, 2012): Sunil Abraham was a panelist along with Ang Peng Hwa, Paul Wilson, Duangthip Chomprang and Raul Echeberria in the session on Internet Governance Plenary. The event was organised by APNIC.

Events Hosted

Meetup for Bangalore's designers (CIS, Bangalore, August 11, 2012): CIS hosted the meet-up in Bangalore.
Visit by students from Hindustan University, Chennai (CIS, Bangalore, August 16, 2012): Sunil Abraham and Elonnai Hickok gave a lecture to students from the Hindustan University.
Interface Intimacies (TERI Complex, Bangalore, August 18 – 20, 2012): CIS conducted a research workshop with Audrey Yue and Namita Malhotra.

Upcoming Events

Thinking with Data@CIS (CIS, Bangalore, September 16 – 18, 2012): The Thinking with Data course offered at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) will be screened at CIS, Bangalore. The screening will be followed by online discussions with the faculty through Skype or Google+ Hangouts. Screening starts from September 12.
Cartonama Conference (MLR Convention Centre, JP Nagar, Bangalore, September 22, 2012): The Cartonama Conference is centred around geospatial data, mapping and location based services. HasGeek supported by CIS is organising this event.
UK DNA Database and the European Court of Human Rights: Lessons that India can Learn from Its Mistakes (Alternative Law Forum, Infantry Road, Shivaji Nagar, Bangalore, September 24, 2012): CIS in collaboration with Alternative Law Forum invites the public to a talk with international experts, Helen Wallace from GeneWatch, UK and Jeremy Gruber from the Council for Responsible Genetics in the United States.

Telecom

While the potential for growth and returns exist for telecommunications in India, a range of issues need to be addressed. One aspect is more extensive rural coverage and the other is a countrywide access to broadband which is low. Both require effective and efficient use of networks and resources, including spectrum:

Building Knowledge and Capacity around Telecommunication Policy in India

Ford Foundation has given a grant of USD 2,00,000 to CIS to build expertise in the area of telecommunications in India. The knowledge repository deals with these modules: Introduction to Telecommunications, Telecommunications Infrastructure and Technologies, Government of India Regulatory Framework for Telecom, Telecommunication and the Market, Universal Access and Accessibility, The International Telecommunications Union and other international bodies, Broadcasting, Emerging Topics and Way Forward. Dr. Surendra Pal, Satya N Gupta, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Payal Malik, Dr. Rakesh Mehrotra and Dr. Nadeem Akhtar are the expert reviewers.

The following are the new outputs:

Auctioning and Allocation of Spectrum (by Snehashish Ghosh): Auction of spectrums was introduced in the telecommunication market after the failure of the administrative process of allocating spectrum. Auctions use a price mechanism to allocate spectrum. Auction of spectrum can be used to increase efficiency and earn maximum revenue.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Act, 1997 (by Snehashish Ghosh): The main objective of the TRAI Act was to establish the TRAI and the Telecom Dispute Settlement Appellate Tribunal. Snehashish also touches upon the amendment to the TRAI Act, government control over TRAI, scheme of the TRAI Act, constitution of TRAI, its powers and functions, grounds and procedures for appeal to the tribunal, etc.
Broadband Wireless Access – Standards (by Jürgen Kock): Jürgen tells us about the broadband wireless access standards, why we need technical standards, who define BWA standards, WiMAX standards and long term evolution.
Mesh Networks (by Ravikiran Annaswamy): Ravikiran tells us the definition of Mesh Networks, its importance, applications and the things to explore in future.
National Telecom Policy, 2012 (by Snehashish Ghosh): The National Telecom Policy, 2012 was approved by the Union Cabinet on May 31, 2012. Snehashish tells us about the vision of the National Telecom Policy, 2012, its background, the strategies (broadband rural telephony and universal service obligation fund), licensing, convergence and value-added services, spectrum management, etc.
New Telecom Policy, 1999 (by Snehashish Ghosh): The New Telecom Policy, 1999 was formulated on the basis of the report of Group on Telecommunication. In this unit, Snehashish talks about the objectives of the Policy, its targets, the new category of service providers, role of the regulator, other mandates to the Policy, amendment to the New Telecom Policy, 1999, etc.
National Telecom Policy, 1994 (by Snehashish Ghosh): The National Telecom Policy, 1994 was formulated for the purpose of opening up the Indian markets for foreign direct investment as well as domestic investment in the telecom sector. Snehashish throws light on the objectives of the National Telecom Policy, 1994, the status of telecom services prior to the implementation of the aforesaid Policy; value added services, hardware and technological aspects, basic services, and outcomes of the National Telecom Policy.

Column in Business Standard

Decision Analysis for Interest Rates - II (Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, August 2, 2012): “India needs to make practical choices that prioritise growth. This is the second column. The previous column was published in the Business Standard on July 5, 2012. It explained how lower interest rates could improve growth by increasing net profits.”

Access to Knowledge

The Access to Knowledge programme addresses the harms caused to consumers, developing countries, human rights, and creativity/innovation from excessive regimes of copyright, patents, and other such monopolistic rights over knowledge:

Key Research

Consumers International IP Watchlist 2012 — India Report (by Pranesh Prakash): The India Report for Consumers International IP Watchlist 2012 was published on the A2K Network website. According to the report, India's Copyright Act is a relatively balanced instrument that recognises the interests of consumers through its broad private use exception, and by facilitating the compulsory licensing of works that would otherwise be unavailable. However, the compulsory licensing provision have not been utilized so far, because of both a lack of knowledge and more importantly because of the stringent conditions attached to them.

Press Coverage

Copyright Law: More Than a Moral Obligation (by Jaya Bhattacharji Rose, Businessworld, August 9, 2012): “So far, things have worked well because sepia-tinted photographs have generally become part of the public domain. But now, only photographs by photographers who died before 1951 are part of the public domain. This has shrivelled up the public domain in photographs since it is even more difficult to trace the photographer...than to estimate the age of a photograph, determining whether a photograph is in the public domain is laden with uncertainty. The use of historical photos in books (and Wikipedia) will be badly affected.”— Pranesh Prakash.

Accessibility

India has an estimated 70 million disabled persons who are unable to read printed materials due to some form of physical, sensory, cognitive or other disability. The disabled need accessible content, devices and interfaces facilitated via copyright law and electronic accessibility policies:

Blog Entry

Ring Side View: Update on WIPO Negotiations on the Treaty for the Visually Impaired (by Rahul Cherian): As the negotiations between Member States progressed it became clear that the United States and the European Union were blocking the Treaty while everybody else was pushing hard for the Treaty. The United States and the European Union were pushing for some form of non-binding instrument that would be more in the nature of a recommendation. Further coverage of this is at Huffington Post and in the Guardian.

Digital Natives

Digital Natives with a Cause? examines the changing landscape of social change and political participation in light of the role that young people play through digital and Internet technologies, in emerging information societies. Consolidating knowledge from Asia, Africa and Latin America, it builds a global network of knowledge partners who critically engage with discourse on youth, technology and social change, and look at alternative practices and ideas in the Global South:

Public Talk

Decoding Digital Natives (Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad, August 31, 2012): Nishant Shah gave a public lecture.

Openness

The 'Openness' programme critically examines alternatives to existing regimes of intellectual property rights, and transparency and accountability. Under this programme, we study Open Government Data, Open Access to Scholarly Literature, Open Access to Law, Open Content, Open Standards, and Free/Libre/Open Source Software:

Event Hosted

Bangalore Force.com August Meetup (CIS, Bangalore, August 19, 2012): John Barnes, CTO Model Metrics gave a lecture at the event organised by Bangalore Force.com.
Technology Evangelists and Religious Evangelists — A Talk by Katherine Sydenham (CIS, Bangalore, August 10, 2012): Katherine Sydenham from the University of Michigan School gave a lecture.
Data-Driven Journalism, Data Literacy & Open Government — Talk at CIS (CIS, Bangalore, August 1, 2012): The event was co-organised by Open Knowledge Foundation and CIS. Lucy Chambers and Laura Newman gave an informal talk on ‘Data-Driven Journalism, Data Literacy, and Open Government'.

CIS is hiring
*Jobs*
CIS is seeking applications from interested candidates for the following posts:

Research Manager: CIS is seeking an individual, full-time, for a period of 12 months, beginning from October 2012. The Research Manager is expected to contribute to conceptualising, managing and executing research projects in the field of Internet and Society, build knowledge networks of researchers towards collaborative and open knowledge production and dissemination, developing and executing the monitoring and evaluation processes for humanities and social sciences based research, supporting and managing academic, popular and hybrid publishing projects from existing and new research and initiate innovative and creative areas and methodologies of studying the Internet and its practices in India and the larger Global South, to develop key research clusters and networks. Send in your applications to admin@cis-india.org.
Researcher/Editor (Accessibility): CIS is hiring for the full-time position of a researcher for its accessibility programme. The job will entail working on researching on national and international policies and best practices in the field of accessibility of information and technology for persons with disabilities. To apply, please send your CV and three examples of writing to nirmita@cis-india.org
Programme Director – Access to Knowledge: CIS is seeking a Programme Director for its New Delhi office. The Programme Director will manage CIS’s Access to Knowledge programme which is funded by the Wikimedia Foundation, to support the growth of Wikipedia and its sister projects and to advance access to free knowledge in India. The Programme Director will partner with the large Wikimedia community in India to focus on Indic and English languages and will manage a team of four staff members.
Programme Officer – Internet Governance: CIS is seeking an individual with a strong background in legal research and policy work to be part of its internet governance (IG) programme. The candidates must have good knowledge of Indian and international law on freedom of expression and privacy, demonstrable research skills, have strong communication skills and be media savvy with the ability to convey complex legal issues clearly to a general audience, open to travel and work independently.

To apply for the posts of Programme Director and Programme Officers, please send your resume to Sunil Abraham (sunil@cis-india.org) or Pranesh Prakash (pranesh@cis-india.org) with three references.

About CIS

CIS was registered as a society in Bangalore in 2008. As an independent, non-profit research organisation, it runs different policy research programmes such as Accessibility, Access to Knowledge, Openness, Internet Governance, and Telecom. Over the last four years our policy research programmes have resulted in outputs such as the e-Accessibility Policy Handbook for Persons with Disabilities with ITU and G3ict, and Digital Alternatives with a Cause?, Thinkathon Position Papers and the Digital Natives with a Cause? Report with Hivos. With the Government of India we have done policy research for Ministry of Communications & Information Technology, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, etc., on WIPO Treaties, Copyright Bill, NIA Bill, etc.

CIS is an accredited NGO at WIPO and has given policy briefs to delegations from various countries, our Programme Manager, Nirmita Narasimhan won the National Award for Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities from the Government of India and also received the NIVH Excellence Award.

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CIS is grateful to its donors, Ford Foundation, Privacy International, UK, Hans Foundation and the Kusuma Trust which was founded by Anurag Dikshit and Soma Pujari, philanthropists of Indian origin, for its core funding and support for most of its projects.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/august-2012-bulletin

Facebook's Delicate Dance With Delhi On Censorship

praskrishna — 2012-09-03T04:39:45Z

At the end of last week, a hashtag briskly rose across India: #Emergency2012. It was a reference to the 21-month stint, beginning in the summer of 1975, when then PM Indira Gandhi determined democracy an inconvenience.

Contributed by Mark Bergen, the post was published in Forbes on August 29, 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

This time around, the government launched a jumbled attempt, following ethnic violence in the northeast, to stem rumors behind a panicked exodus. They blocked over 300 sites and axed at least 16 Twitter accounts, including those of political opponents and journalists. Many of us found our cell phone texts suddenly, with no announcement, cut off after five missives.

It was hardly the Emergency of 1975. The government’s actions were far less draconian than three decades ago. But, back then, there were no foreign internet companies to complicate matters—and, it seems, absolve the government.

In response to the recent charges, Delhi claimed that there was “no censorship at all.” As the communications minister, Kapil Sibal, put it, “Facebook and Google are cooperating with us.”

Under the circumstances, shutting down the incendiary hate speech online was warranted, explained Sunil Abraham, the director of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore. The process was just incredibly inept. “There were so many things they did wrong,” he told me when I asked about the government’s response. And the reaction can be tacked onto a very recent history of Delhi issuing sweeping, usually empty, threats of censoring U.S. internet companies.

“Perhaps the Indian government has wasted, frittered a way goodwill,” Abraham continued. “It has cried ‘wolf’ so many times that this time the internet intermediaries are not taking them as seriously as they should.”

His group analyzed the sites shut down last week, pointing out the “numerous mistakes and inconsistencies that make blocking pointless and ineffectual.” It’s clear that the censorship was also opportunistic—used to stamp out political parody Twitter accounts—and counterproductive. Among the sites blocked was a Pakistani blog debunking the rumors behind the whole exodus episode.

Abraham criticized the government for coming to the intermediaries with broad demands first, rather than directly to Twitter, Facebook and Google. That approach, coupled with earlier censorship demands, may strain the trust between the ruling coalition and the web giants.

Still, Facebook has every reason to keep Delhi happy. This year, the number of users in India hit 32 million—a 85 percent jump from the last. The total is expected to nearly double next year, leap-frogging Indonesia for the title of second largest market. An overwhelming chunk of that growth will come from mobile users. As this solid report from Forbes India shows, the company is still struggling here, as it is in the U.S., to turn those new users into ad revenue:

Indian businesses spent Rs 2,850 crore on digital advertising as of March 2012, a number that’s expected to grow to Rs 4,391 crore next year, according to a report by the Internet Mobile Association of India/Indian Market Research Bureau (IAMAI/IMRB).

…But Facebook has not been able to capture much of this share. Mahesh Murthy reckons that businesses spent about Rs 150 crore on Facebook marketing, but only a third went to Facebook’s own kitties in the form of ad revenues. The rest went to social media marketing firms which handle Facebook accounts.

That’s not to say that the company will discontinue its aggressive efforts. It likely will not be deterred by policies that attack free speech—Zuckerberg’s empire has long been accused of complacency with censorship. It’s India’sinfamously unpredictable tax policies toward foreign entities that would conceivably slow the company’s expansion.

There’s little reason to suspect, then, that Facebook, Google and the western web behemoths will not continue to cooperate with Delhi moving forward. And much of that cooperation should come not as blatant censorship but covert surveillance. According to the Google Transparency Report, India has made over 2,000 data requests and 100 removal requests, third only to the States and Brazil. As the mobile revolution soars, that number will surely rise.

On Monday evening, Christopher Soghoian, a D.C.-based privacy analyst, spoke at the CIS before a crowd of young Indian law students and activists. Despite the shoddy security default of internet firms, he said, they can impose limits on government surveillance. “When these companies receive requests from where they don’t have an office,” he claimed, “they refuse.” Two years ago, Facebook India opened its first office in Hyderabad.

Soghoian advised his audience to push for privacy and transparency standards in India. He shared the story of the long-fought battle for encryption protection with Facebook in the U.S. Yet, he admitted that security provisions can falter when a government is bent on policing the internet—and a company is bent on cooperation. “If you can force companies to hand over the keys,” he said, “then encryption is useless.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-forbes-com-mark-bergen-aug-29-2012-facebooks-delicate-dance-with-delhi-on-censorship

Tata Photon unblocks Wordpress.com

praskrishna — 2012-09-03T01:53:47Z

As of yesterday, the Tata Photon service of the Internet service provider (ISP) Tata Teleservices seems to have lifted the block it had put on the Wordpress.com domain for over a week.

The post was published in tech2 on August 30, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted in it.

Tech2 had reported on Saturday that the free platform of Wordpress was put under a blanket ban across India by the ISP following government orders to block around 309 URLs carrying disruptive or inflammatory content. Directives issued by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to ISPs between August 18 and 21 state that only the URLs mentioned be blocked, not entire domains. Users could neither view Wordpress blogs nor edit or post new content on them, the first instance of which was noticed by us on August 20.

Our repeated efforts to contact Tata Teleservices' officials drew a blank. Numerous users who contacted customer service did not receive any replies or resolution. Through the course of the blockade, the ISP did not even display any message to Wordpress visitors that the domain was blocked, nor did it notify the owners of Wordpress blogs about it. Puzzled users tried resetting their Internet connections, clearing DNS caches, and calling the customer service helpline only to realise that they were experiencing an ISP-level block.

The reactions of Wordpress users ranged from annoyance to distress. Human rights activist and lawyer Kamayani Bali Mahabal commented on Tech2, "Yes, my wordpress blog is blocked and I have 4 blogs...have also written to TATA. I can access through [an] anonymous browser but I cannot log in, edit and do admin functions, I can do about 50 percent work on my blog. Dashboard not accessible[,] barely manage to post, will be suing TATA soon". In a blog post, she has described her experience of the block.

Blogger Shantanu Adhicary who goes by the nom de blog Tantanoo says, "My blogs are self-hosted [on Wordpress] so I was not affected. But it was annoying that I was unable to access, read or comment on other Wordpress blogs, especially in the absence of any message whatsoever that this site has been blocked".

The move by Tata Teleservices is being seen as ham handed; around 25 million Wordpress blogs were made inaccessible to deal with a few rotten eggs. Blogger and social media consultant Prateek Shah opines, "Blanket bans on domains because content on some of their pages is objectionable are akin to jailing a certain section of society just because some people from the community broke the law. Wordpress plays an extremely important role on the Internet and if such a site were to go down even for a few hours, it would mean mayhem for bloggers as well as readers who count on the platform to get the latest updates and information. ISPs need to mature and grow up to the fact that one can't put millions of people in jeopardy when apparently trying to protect the interests of some".

In June, the Madras High Court had granted relief to netizens in India by urging that there be no more John Doe orders. “The order of interim injunction dated 25/04/2012 is hereby clarified that the interim injunction is granted only in respect of a particular URL where the infringing movie is kept and not in respect of the entire website. Further, the applicant is directed to inform about the particulars of URL where the interim movie is kept within 48 hours.”

Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director at Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), agrees the move was wrong but shares insights about the position of the ISPs. He says, "It was obviously wrong. It contravenes the government's orders to not block the base URL but individual pages. Action should be taken against them for causing inconvenience to users. This is not the first time an ISP has gone overboard in implementing censorship, be it copyright issues, piracy or inflammatory content. In 2006, the government had chastised ISPs for over-censoring content and blocking unintended websites and pages. Having said that, ISPs have numerous grouses against the government. They do not possess the technical capabilities to implement the government's orders, at times, whether about surveillance or censorship".

ISPs that are also telecom services providers, find themselves unable to decipher government notifications about shutting off content on the Internet or introducing curbs on mobile communication. Prakash's analysis of the 300-odd URLs blocked by the Indian government reveals glaring mistakes in the government directives "that made blocking pointless and effectual". When asked to opine about what ISPs and telcos should do when the orders from the government were not crystal clear, Prakash said, "They should ask for clarifications from the government. The operators sought clarifications from the Ministry of Telecommunications about the recent orders to ban bulk text messages and MMSes. The ministry was unable to resolve them, and in turn, sought further clarifications from the Home Ministry. The government should coordinate better".

Tata Teleservices was not the only ISP guilty of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Sify too reportedly imposed a blanket block on the Wordpress domain. Airtel went overboard by temporarily blocking Youtu.be URLs last week citing orders by the court or the DoT.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/tech-2-in-com-aug-30-2012-tata-photon-unblocks-wordpress

SMS Block as Threat to Free Speech

Chinmayi Arun — 2012-09-02T09:02:11Z

If you could text just one or two people in a day, who would you choose? Many of us have had to make this choice thanks to the order limiting us to five texts a day. Short Message Service (SMS) is not used primarily to send staccato messages like the telegraph was.

(This article was published in the Business Line print edition dated September 1, 2012)

Whole conversations take place across SMS, and language has mutated to facilitate this. Anyone accustomed to this universe of parallel conversation, relationships and support must have found the five texts, and perhaps even the 20 texts, limit very restrictive. It isolated the hearing-impaired and created chaos for those who use bulk-texts to schedule classes or meetings, or run businesses.

Such a ban on communication must be examined to see whether it violates our right to freedom of speech and expression. The texting limit had a direct restrictive effect on our freedom of speech, since it limited communication.

We need to consider whether our rights were restricted legitimately, for reasons permitted by the Constitution. The Indian judiciary has created guidelines to help evaluate the reasonability of restrictions on free speech. The SMS block will be examined against these guidelines to see whether the restriction of communication was justified.

‘Reasonable’ curbs

The Constitution permits restriction of the right to freedom of speech only for limited permitted reasons, one of which is ‘public order’.

However, any such restriction must also qualify as reasonable when measured against the standard created by the Supreme Court. For instance, banning publication of all newspapers for a month because of some newspapers carrying material that may incite riots would most certainly not be reasonable.

The question then arises as to what would amount to a reasonable restriction. The judiciary has considered this question several times and stated that it will take into account, among other things, the nature of the rights infringed, the circumstances under which the restriction has been imposed, the extent and urgency of evil sought to be remedied and the proportionality of the imposition. The order restricting freedom must also have a proximate relationship with the achievement of public order.

Examining the situation at hand from this perspective, we find that people of north-east Indian origin in southern India have been receiving threats — via SMS and other communication channels — of such severity, that it has prompted them to uproot themselves from their lives and their homes en masse. That so many citizens were made to feel unsafe in their own country is cause for concern and the Government is right to take it seriously. It can be argued that this is a public order problem.

However the reasonability of the restriction on SMS is much harder to prove. For such a wide restriction on the freedom of speech to be reasonable, there would need to be a demonstrable nexus or proximate relationship between the bulk-text ban and the resolution of the public order problem. Additionally, the proportionality of the restriction is questionable since it is unclear why such a universal block of bulk-texts was necessary, instead of filtration of texts based on keywords, or identification of a pool of mobile users who pose a greater risk.

SMS and public order

The nexus between texting and restoration of public order appears remote for two reasons. The first is that SMS is not the only way to spread rumours and threats. The block was unlikely to go a long way in protecting anyone from harm since other ways of threatening and rumour-mongering remained available: Third-generation mobile technology, telephone calls and good old-fashioned word-of-mouth.

The second reason is that the dissemination of rumours and threats by themselves would be of less concern if they did not cause the exodus, which had little to do with technology. The problem lies less in SMS technology’s facilitation of rapid communication, and more in the reality of how people of north-eastern origin are treated in other parts of India and why the state security forces like the police do not inspire much confidence in them.

In this socio-political reality, restricting the number of reassuring texts and information that people of northeastern origin may send each other was hardly going to help them feel safer.

Universal embargo

Additionally, the universality of the block is particularly vulnerable to being challenged as unconstitutional. The Delhi High Court has recently declared that an order blocking bulk-SMS unreasonably restricts the right to freedom of speech because such a universal embargo, even if directed at protecting consumers’ privacy, is too broad since it affects not just telemarketers but also people sending non-commercial bulk messages.

The Court felt that since all categories of texts were blocked regardless of their connection to the harm in question, the bulk-text ban unjustifiably affected citizens’ legitimate free speech rights.

The order limiting everyone to 200 texts a day was therefore set aside to the extent that it affected people other than the specific group at which it should have been directed. Imagine how this principle might apply to an order that limits the bulk of mobile phone users to five, or even 20, texts a day.

The trouble with new communications technology is that it takes some time for policy-makers and interested parties to learn to balance the various rights affected. The SMS block, which was been lifted on August 30, unsuccessfully to protect a group of citizens from harm at the cost of many people’s freedom of speech rights. However laudable the motives, this block was an illustration of the worrying lack of accountability and procedural safeguards that lie between our rights and state excesses.

Right to communicate

If Arab Spring made headlines on how mobile phones were use to mobilise, Bahrain’s silenced revolution demonstrated use of the same technology to unravel mobilisation by blocking communication. Our constitution protects our right to communicate freely as well as our right to assemble. As technology evolves to better enable communication, we need to protect its infrastructure, by embedding our rights in the new communication framework.

It is to be hoped that India provides better protection of constitutional rights across communication networks. Restriction of communication needs to be proportionate, justified and within the constitutional accountability mechanism, so that citizens’ rights are not violated any more than strictly necessary.

Without this, we are powerless in the face of what may come — be it the mass surveillance that was once the stuff of dystopic novels or the throttling of communication in the public sphere reminiscent of China.

However, laudable the motives, the SMS block was an illustration of the lack of accountability and procedural safeguards that lie between our rights and state excesses.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/www-the-hindubusinessline-op-ed-sep-1-2012-chinmayi-arun-sms-block-as-threat-to-free-speech

When #GOIBlocks, twitterati fly off their ‘handles’

praskrishna — 2012-08-26T05:56:19Z

Ever since the news broke mid-week that some genuine Twitter accounts and six spoof accounts were blocked, the social networking platform has been in a tizzy.

Published in the Hindustan Times on August 26, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Hashtags like #GOIblocks and variations on the same theme began “trending” and the twitterati, functioning like a virtual democracy, have been bombarding the world in real time with posts about the issue. 16 accounts of the 15 million twitter users in India, among them those of a few journalists, spoof accounts like @PM0India, a right-wing parody of @PMOIndia, the official twitter account of the Prime Minister’s office, and a few anonymous accounts like Barbarian Indian (@barbarindian) and Dosabandit (@dosabandit) were blocked.

While Narendra Modi turned his twitter display picture black in solidarity with the idea of freedom of speech (and was promptly termed a hypocrite with many like @JagPaws, who has 641 followers, tweeting, “Whoa!! Is he supporting Jihadi sites?”), Pankaj Pachauri, (49,827 followers) Communications Adviser to the Prime Minister’s office, has put up twitter rules and the National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon’s ominously pro-surveillance keynote address at the release of the IDSA report on “India’s Cyber Security Challenge”.

Many like Nitin Pai @acorn, with 16,988 followers, founder of Takshashila Institute, a public policy think tank, tweeted that “under extraordinary circumstances, the govt must do whatever it can under the constitution to prevent loss of life” and added that targeted and temporary blocks of sites, facebook pages and twitter handles that spewed hate were acceptable. Others like film maker Harini Calamur (@calamur) (11,277 followers) who says she is against censorship tweeted that “Blocking internet handles & sites is silly” and “the Govt’s job is to uphold the constitution & protect our fundamental rights. Not make value judgements.” Much of the debate has led to a genuine exchange, sometimes making comrades of people from opposing camps. Kanchan Gupta, a journalist known for his pro-Hindutva views, whose twitter handle @KanchanGupta (26,424 followers) was among those blocked, accepted on TV that scores of “people from all communities” many of whom “disagreed violently” with him had extended their support on twitter.

Others like writer Shivam Vij (@Dilidurast), who has 3,296 followers, whom Hindutvawadis has often branded ‘pseudo sickular’, surprised baiters by speaking against the ban.

Many were strident in their criticism of the arbitrary nature of the blocks and tweeted that it was indicative of authoritarianism. “Internet blocks in India have been increasing in frequency&intensity. I wouldn't put this down to knee-jerk/foolishness.There is *intent*,” tweeted Nikhil Pahwa (@nixxin), founder and editor of @medianama. Others like business journalist Samidha Sharma @samidhas worried that the government’s frequent attacks on freedom of expression shows that it is “following china in all the wrong things”.

While Pranesh Prakash (@pranesh_prakash) of the Centre for Internet and Society tweeted, “They've blocked sites from all parts of the spectrum: Muslim right-wing, Hindu right-wing, neutral news sites, etc. No politics”, many others saw the move as a “self-serving” one. “Dear GoI: why not be honest enough to say that this web censorship has NOTHING to do with security+ all to do with your own arrogance” tweeted Sunny Singh (@sunnysingh_nw3).

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-hindustan-times-aug-26-2012-when-goi-blocks-twitterati-fly-off-their-handles

How ISPs block websites and why it doesn’t help

praskrishna — 2012-08-25T06:56:41Z

Banning websites is ineffective against malicious users as workarounds are easy and well known.

Gopal Sathe's article was published by LiveMint on August 24, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

India blocked 245 web pages for provocative content on Monday in an effort to prevent the spread of hate messages and lessen communal tensions in the country, and suggested via an official release on the website of the Press Information Bureau that more could follow.

As was widely reported in the days that followed, most websites blocked were not related to the ethnic clashes in Assam.

Pranesh Prakash, programme manager with the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, analysed the sites which were listed by the government. In his analysis, 33% of all blocked addresses were on Facebook, 27.8% on YouTube, 9.7% on Twitter and the rest were spread over a number of different websites including Wikipedia, Firspost.com and TimesofIndia.Indiatimes.com.

Prakash says, “I don’t believe that the decision to block sites was politically motivated, but I do believe that in trying to prevent harm, the government has gone overboard.”

He also writes in his analysis, “Even though many of the items on that list do deserve (in my opinion) to be removed [...] the people and companies hosting the material should have been asked to remove it, instead of ordering the ISPs to block them.”

Prakash also pointed out, “There are numerous egregious mistakes. Even people and posts debunking rumours have been blocked, and it is clear that the list was not compiled with sufficient care.”

Of course, India’s overall record on Internet censorship isn’t great, with the current laws encouraging Internet service providers (ISPs) to take down content without investigating individual cases properly. And that is not even taking into consideration official government orders, such as this decision to block websites.

The process of blocking content for an ISP is very simple. After all, any content that is coming from a website to your computer has to travel through the ISP, giving it ample opportunity to observe and censor banned content.

Think of it like this—you’re on an island, with no way to reach the mainland (Internet) where all the websites are. The ISP builds a bridge connecting you to the mainland, and charges you to let cars (data) from the sites come to you, by opening the road. Each web page has a unique ID, like a licence plate. If the government tells the ISP to block a specific page, it’s added to the blacklist, and isn’t allowed on the bridge. The government could also block a full domain, such as Facebook.com, which would be like blocking all cars with DL plates, instead of specific numbers.

New Delhi based cyber security consultant Dominic K. says, “The content is still there and can be accessed from outside India, so these measures are really very ineffective. People can use proxies or a virtual private network (VPN) to circumvent these measures with ease, by appearing to be a different site; so banning sites does nothing to deter malicious users.”

Proxies are websites that load blocked sites for you—if the proxy is not using the ISP doing the block, they can still load the content from the blocked site and present it to the users, since the blocklists simply block websites, and not their content.

VPNs work in a similar fashion, creating a virtual presence for the user outside of their own country. This can be done to circumvent blocks and access region-specific content, but is also a perfectly legitimate tool, and can increase your security greatly.

It’s a pretty crude system but it’s used around the world. In Australia, for example, the government has a page that directly lists their web censorship activities. It wants to block material that includes child sexual abuse imagery, bestiality, sexual violence, detailed instruction in crime, violence or drug use and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act. However, as noted on the same page, these measures can be easily circumvented. Since the content remains on the Internet, and is only blocked, it can be accessed by “any technically competent user”.

China, meanwhile, is frequently criticized for what is called, tongue-in-cheek, “the great firewall of China”. Reporters without Borders, a French organization that works for freedom of the press, has a list of countries that are “enemies of the Internet”. China, Iran, North Korea and Burma are some of the worst offenders, but Australia, India, Egypt, France and South Korea are also on the watchlist as “countries under surveillance”.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE publish detailed information on their filtering practices but other countries such as China return connection errors, and fake “file not found” errors.

There is a long history of Internet censorhip in India, and a perception that the laws have been used for political ends. Net censorship has been around for a while—in 1999, VSNL blocked access to Pakistani newspapers. Later, in 2006 the government wanted to block certain separatist groups of the Yahoo! Groups platform. While the government issued specific pages for the ban, initially, the whole Yahoo! Groups domain was blocked by ISPs. In 2007, Orkut was told to remove “defamatory” pages created by users.

Cartoon pornography website Savitabhabi.com was also blocked in 2009, while several blogging services such as Typepad were blocked last year for a few weeks, and then the block was lifted, with no explanations.

Like Australia, in the UK too, child pornography is filtered by the government, though users there have to opt-in for this filtering. Other countries such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden also see such content being filtered. The Indian IT Act also notes various kinds of illegal content which is not permissible, such as child pornography and hate speech.

Other countries, such as the US, also have aggressive Internet censorship of copyrighted content. Prakash says, “Internet censorship is not restricted to India alone. Every country in the world has been doing this in different ways. The United States, for example, has even seized domains in copyright cases, which were legally hosted in other countries. With regards to political censorship, which some feel is a concern now, I don’t think that the Indian government is doing that. I believe that they are sincerely trying to address a serious issue, but people are going overboard.”

He adds, “The biggest concern is that there is no transparency about what is being blocked, or why, and this leaves things open for active misuse in the future.”

In Google’s 2011 Transparency Report, released in June this year, India did not feature very favourably. According to Google, the number of content removal requests the company received increased by 49% from 2010. There were five court orders from India ordering the Internet giant to remove content and there were 96 other requests by Indian government agencies for 246 individual items.

In comparison, the US made only 77 requests in the same period. They also revealed that 70% of the content removal requests from India were related to defamation. National security and religious offence attracted far fewer removal requests. Google received only one request from Indian agencies from July to December 2011 for removal of pornographic content.

Our government might not be politically motivated in this instance—however, the possibility for abuse is high, and what’s more, the measures that are being taken are limited at best. Instead of ordering ISPs to block content directly, the government should be working with the content owners and platforms offering the content to have it taken down properly. Instead, we get crude measures which do nothing to deter malicious users, and only serve to inconvenience the general users.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/www-livemint-com-aug-24-2012-gopal-sathe-how-isps-block-websites-and-why-it-doesnt-help

Mesh Networks

Ravikiran Annaswamy — 2013-03-15T09:39:03Z

Ravikiran Annaswamy tells us the definition of Mesh Networks, its importance, applications and the things to explore in future.

Imagine[1] a room full of people in a party spread around randomly. One of the people wants to pass information to another in the corner of the room. The traditional telecom networking way of passing information involves having a person at the center of the room acts as a switch and routes the information from sender to receiver.

Mesh networks provides a new way of organizing the network, every person in the room can speak independently to the person next to him and in turn the second person speaks to the next person till the information reaches the destination. The route for the information is optimized to get the shortest path.

Definition of Mesh Networks

Mesh networks are highly interconnected network of computers or communication devices. This concept is applicable in software systems, wired networks and wireless networks. These networks consist of nodes (like computers, routers, radio base stations and mobile phones) and are connected to each other to carry information across.

Mesh networking is organic — every node in the neighborhood contributes network resources and cooperates.[2]

By Definition, Mesh networks are a way of structuring peer nodes in such a way that each node acts as a switch or a router deciding how to forward the information they receive. These networks use every node to determine the path of the signal, hence its important for every node in the network to be live and healthy. This requires self-healing algorithms to dynamically identify new routes in the network. The concept of Self-organizing Networks (SON) is being implemented to achieve flexibility and scalability.

Importance of Mesh Networks

Traditionally telecom networks are hierarchically structured with centralized control systems. Mobility and increase in number of wireless devices needs a distributed architecture with intelligent nodes like in Mesh networks to manage bandwidth, optimally use spectrum and device power consumption.

IEEE 802.11s is a standard that defines how wireless devices can interconnect to create a mesh network. This covers both the static networks and the ad-hoc networks.

Applications of Mesh Networks

Mesh Networks are applied in various areas of telecom like:

Optical Mesh Networks enable the transport networks with dynamic quality of service, bandwidth on demand and managing bandwidth with peer nodes and applying policies.
Rural or Village communication systems work with wireless nodes in every village connected to each other and provide communication services without depending on the operator infrastructure.
Wireless Ad-hoc networks are decentralized networks with no predefined structure.

Wireless mesh Network is a telecom network made up of radio nodes organized in a mesh topology.[3] This network is used in LTE radio, Metro-Wi-Fi networks and military communication applications in battlefield surveillance, tunnels and oil rigs.
Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANET) are mobile devices connected to each other without the need of a central infrastructure. Vehicular ad-hoc networks where vehicles communicate with fixed internet points on the road or between the vehicles themselves is an interesting application.

Next things to look for in future

Mesh networks are evolving in to real world scenarios where in sensors that monitor physical and environmental conditions are networked. These small low power wireless devices are connected through standardized ZigBee[4] protocol specifications.

The application of ZigBee is seen in Home automation, Health care, Remote controls and Smart energy meters.

[1].System Architecture for Wireless Meshes, Fairpoint Group White paper, April 2007, FPG 2007-127.1
[2].Self Organizing Wireless Mesh Networks, Microsoft Research, http://bit.ly/11Rmec
[3].Wireless Mesh Networks: http://bit.ly/hVKII0
[4].ZigBee Description: http://bit.ly/u8XNS

Glossary

Metro-Wi-Fi: Wireless network built with Wi Fi components covering the entire city
MANET: Mobile Ad-hoc networks

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/telecom/resources/mesh-networks

July 2012 Bulletin

praskrishna — 2012-10-09T11:46:15Z

Welcome to the newsletter issue of July 2012 from the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS). The present issue features a constitutional analysis of the Information Technology (Intermediaries' Guidelines) Rules notified in April 2011, an analysis of the Indian Draft DNA Profiling Act and CIS statement on Exceptions and Limitations for Libraries and Archives made at WIPO.

Jobs

CIS is seeking applications from interested candidates for the following posts:

Research Manager: CIS is seeking an individual, full-time, for a period of 12 months, beginning from October 2012. The Research Manager is expected to contribute to conceptualising, managing and executing research projects in the field of Internet and Society, build knowledge networks of researchers towards collaborative and open knowledge production and dissemination, developing and executing the monitoring and evaluation processes for humanities and social sciences based research, supporting and managing academic, popular and hybrid publishing projects from existing and new research and initiate innovative and creative areas and methodologies of studying the Internet and its practices in India and the larger Global South, to develop key research clusters and networks. Send in your applications by September 5, 2012 to admin@cis-india.org.
Programme Director – Access to Knowledge: CIS is seeking a Programme Director for its New Delhi office. The Programme Director will manage CIS’s Access to Knowledge programme which is funded by the Wikimedia Foundation, to support the growth of Wikipedia and its sister projects and to advance access to free knowledge in India. The Programme Director will partner with the large Wikimedia community in India to focus on Indic and English languages and will manage a team of four staff members.
Programme Officer – Access to Knowledge and Openness: CIS is seeking an individual with a strong background in policy research and advocacy to be part of its Openness and Access to Knowledge programmes. The candidates must have knowledge of Indian and international law on copyright, demonstrable research skills, public-speaking skills, open to travel and work independently.
Programme Officer – Internet Governance: CIS is seeking an individual with a strong background in legal research and policy work to be part of its internet governance (IG) programme. The candidates must have good knowledge of Indian and international law on freedom of expression and privacy, demonstrable research skills, have strong communication skills and be media savvy with the ability to convey complex legal issues clearly to a general audience, open to travel and work independently.

To apply for the posts of Programme Director and Programme Officers, please send your resume to Sunil Abraham (sunil@cis-india.org) or Pranesh Prakash (pranesh@cis-india.org) with three references.

Internet Governance

Featured Research

Constitutional Analysis of the Information Technology (Intermediaries' Guidelines) Rules, 2011 (by Ujwala Uppaluri): Ujwala Uppaluri provides a constitutional analysis of the Information Technology (Intermediaries' Guidelines) Rules notified in April 2011, and examines its compatibility with Articles 14, 19, 21 of the Constitution of India.
Overview and Concerns Regarding the Indian Draft DNA Profiling Act (by GeneWatch UK & the Council for Responsible Genetics, US): The 2007 DNA Profiling Bill pending before the Parliament attempts to create an ambitious centralized DNA bank that would store DNA records of virtually anyone who comes within any proximity to the criminal justice system. The Bill contains provisions limiting access to and use of information contained in the database, and provides for the deletion of a person’s DNA profile upon their acquittal.

Columns

Internet Censorship: Anonymous Can’t be Just Harmful Hackers (Nishant Shah, FirstPost, July 13, 2012): If there was ever an interesting time for people concerned with freedom of speech and expression to live in, it is now, and it is definitely in India. It has been a series of battles the last couple of years, where a slightly out-dated government machinery has been trying to control and contain the burgeoning online spaces, only to be put in their place by the new-age tech-ninjas that have risen as the new heroes in our digital times.
Open letter to Hillary Clinton on Internet Freedom (Sunil Abraham, Thinking Aloud, July 17, 2012): Sunil Abraham’s open letter to Hillary Clinton was based on a presentation made during a panel discussion at a Google sponsored conference titled Internet at Liberty 2012 in Washington DC on May 24, 2012. The present article published in Thinking Aloud is an updated version of the blog entry published by CIS earlier this year.

Event Report

Privacy Matters — Medical Privacy (Yashwantrao Chavan Academy of Development Administration, Pune, June 30, 2012): Privacy India in partnership with the Indian Network for People living with HIV/AIDS, CIS, IDRC, and Society in Action Group with support from London-based Privacy International, held a public discussion on "Medical Privacy". Elonnai Hickok introduced the draft book Privacy in India: A Policy Guide that Privacy India had been compiling. The participants discussed medical privacy in India, the legal aspects of medical privacy, Supreme Court views on medical negligence, confidentiality and privacy, best practices on medical privacy in various health settings, etc.

Ongoing Event

The Asian Edge: 2012 Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Society Summer School: The 2nd Biannual Inter Asia Cultural Studies (IACS) Summer School is being hosted in Bangalore, India by CIS and the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society. The IACS Summer School brings together South and East Asian experts from different disciplines as faculty for graduate and advanced research students to engage with key issues of larger social, cultural and political concerns in cultural studies in Asia.

Upcoming Event

Role of the US Tech Companies in Government Surveillance: A Lecture by Christopher Soghoian (Centre for Internet and Society, 194, 2-C Cross, Domlur Stage II, Bangalore (Near Domlur Club and the TERI Complex)): Your internet, phone and web application providers are all, for the most part, in bed with US and other foreign government agencies. They all routinely disclose their customers' communications and other private data to law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Worse, firms like Google and Microsoft specifically log data in order to assist the government — How? — Find out — Christopher Soghoian will give a lecture on the role companies play in assisting government surveillance.

Events Organised

Privacy Matters — Consumer Privacy (India International Centre, New Delhi, July 7, 2012): Privacy India, in partnership with the Centre for Internet & Society, International Development Research Centre, Society in Action Group and Privacy International, invite you to a public conference focused on discussing the challenges and concerns to consumer privacy in India.
The Fifth Elephant (NIMHANS Convention Centre, Bangalore, July 27 and 28, 2012): The event was organised by HasGeek and supported by CIS. The first day covered the technology track and talks from business and industry were held on the following day.

Events Participated

Speak Easy: Citizenship, Freedom of Expression and Online Governance (American Centre, Kasturba Gandhi Marg, Connaught Place, New Delhi, July 31, 2012): Chinmayi Arun, a Fellow at CIS spoke at this event organised by the YP Foundation, Youth Ki Awaaz, Change.Org and RTI Anonymous.
Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum 2012 (Aoyama Campus, Aoyama Gakuin University, Tokyo, July 20, 2012). Sunil Abraham was a speaker in the session on international public policy and internet governance issues pertaining to the internet. The event was organised by APrIGF.Asia.
Fifth Meeting of the two Sub-Groups on Privacy Issues under the Chairmanship of Justice AP Shah (New Delhi, July 22, 2012): Sunil Abraham participated in this meeting held under the Chairmanship of Justice A.P. Shah, former Chief Justice of Delhi High Court.
Fourth Meeting of the two Sub-Groups on Privacy Issues under the Chairmanship of Justice AP Shah (Committee Room No. 228, Yojana Bhawan, Planning Commission, New Delhi, July 9, 2012): Sunil Abraham participated in the fourth meeting on privacy issues under the Chairmanship of Justice A.P. Shah, former Chief Justice of Delhi High Court.

News & Media Coverage

A Net of Hatred (Samar Khurshid, Hindustan Times, July 14, 2012): “The problem is...that internet conversations become extreme. Liberals don’t get embroiled in heated arguments while fundamentalists, dedicated to extreme ideologies, tend to win out." Web censorship...is in vain as the net is too vast to control.”— Pranesh Prakash.
Post-website attack, cops hot on pursuit of Anonymous hackers (The Times of India, July 11, 2012): “Anonymous consists of a large bunch of activists who gained some credibility in India after they organised offline protests. But this operation doesn't serve any purpose and brings down their credibility as details of those who filed complaints have been revealed.” — Pranesh Prakash.
The kids are all on Facebook (Shikha Kumar, Daily News & Analysis, July 8, 2012): “Children’s interaction online should always be under parental supervision. Censorship and control is not the responsibility of the government, but of parents.” — Sunil Abraham.
Freedom debate takes a new course (Deepa Kurup, The Hindu, July 1, 2012): “Under Indian copyright law, ISPs cannot be liable for copyright infringement committed by their users. So while it is good that the court clarified that its order was limited in its scope, it is possible to read even this as going far beyond that which is allowed under the law.” — Pranesh Prakash.

Access to Knowledge

WIPO

CIS participated at the 24^th session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyrights and Related Rights held in Geneva from July 16 to 25, 2012. The outcomes are listed below:

India's Opening Statement on the Treaty for the Visually Impaired at SCCR 24: The opening statement of the Indian delegation was delivered by G.R. Raghavender on July 19, 2012. The statement called upon all countries to conclude textual work on the treaty and call for a Diplomatic Conference to finalize it.
CIS's Statement on the Treaty for the Visually Impaired: Pranesh Prakash read out CIS statement on July 20, 2012.
CIS's Statement on the WIPO Broadcast Treaty: Pranesh Prakash read out CIS statement specifically on the Chair's Non Paper on the Protection of Broadcasters which was released on July 23, 2012.
CIS's Statement on Exceptions & Limitations for Libraries and Archives: Pranesh Prakash delivered the statement on the issue of exceptions and limitations for libraries and archives on July 25, 2012.
Transcripts of Discussions at WIPO: The proceedings were live streamed. Copies of the unedited transcripts are hosted for archival purposes.

International Press Coverage

U.S. support sought for treaty to allow blind people access to copyrighted works (Rama Lakshmi, Washington Post, July 24, 2012): “The vast majority of visually disabled people live in poor, developing countries where very little money is spent on converting books into accessible formats, while they are much more readily available elsewhere...The treaty would end the book famine that they currently face.” — Pranesh Prakash.
US and EU blocking treaty to give blind people access to books (Paige McClanahan, The Guardian, July 30, 2012): “We in developing countries have found our voice and we are not going to back down. When people are demanding their basic rights, no power in the world is strong enough to stop them getting what they want.”— Rahul Cherian.

National Press Coverage

EU stalls treaty talks to allow copyright waiver for print disabilities (The Hindu, Priscilla Jebaraj, July 25, 2012): “[The treaty] would allow organisations working for the blind to import and export accessible works without seeking the copyright holder's permission, since very little money is spent in developing countries on converting books into accessible formats, while they are much more readily available elsewhere.” — Pranesh Prakash.

Accessibility

Blog Entry

Accessibility of Government Websites in India — Test Results

Openness

Blog Entries

Unpacking Openness: From Seemingly Transparent to Definitely Opaque: Nishant Shah was in Netherlands recently and as part of his trip had given a public lecture to an audience at Kennisland. One of the respondents wrote a small write-up of the talk. This was originally published on the Kennisland website on July 25, 2012.
2012 Conference on Trends in Knowledge Information Dynamics (by Rebecca Schild): The 2012 Conference on Trends in Knowledge Information Dynamics convened a panel on Open Access. There was consensus amongst the panelist that the “big question” facing the open access movement no longer remains "if" or "why" open access, but rather "how" open access. The panel proved instructive for shifting the discussion away from ideology towards concrete questions facing the open access agenda and its implementation.
Open Government Data (by Pranesh Prakash): Pranesh Prakash provides an analysis of the chapter that CIS published in this report with Transparency & Accountability Initiative.

Grant Award

Wikimedia Foundation awards grant to Centre for Internet and Society to expand Access to Knowledge in India: Wikimedia Foundation has approved a grant to the Centre for Internet and Society to expand their Access to Knowledge program in India. This information was published by Barry Newstead, Chief Global Development Officer on the Wikimedia Foundation website on August 1, 2012.

Digital Natives

Book Review

Deconstructing Digital Natives: Young People, Technology and the New Literacies: Nishant Shah was invited to do a book review of a new anthology 'Deconstructing Digital Natives', edited by Michael Thomas. The review was published in Routledge's Journal of Children and Media on July 18, 2012.

Digital Natives Newsletter

Citizen Activism the Past Decade: The deadline for contribution to the Digital Natives newsletter expires on August 15. Nilofar Ansher gives a list of topics that contributors can explore in this blog entry.

Columns

Across Borders (Nishant Shah, Indian Express, July 5, 2012): “Digital Natives are not only a mobile-wielding generation, but also a mobile generation. They are fluid, not necessarily tied to the geographies of their origin, and often imagine themselves, as travelling across different networks and systems, like the information traffic on the internet. This dislocation of the fixity of where we are from and who we are is one of the most exciting results of the digital turn.”
Revisiting Techno-euphoria (Nishant Shah, DML Central, July 5, 2012): “The gadgets and tools we use are, actually, only material manifestations of the digital — which operates at the level of a paradigm or a context, through which we are slowly reshaping the material, social, and cultural notions of who we are and how we connect to the world around us.”

Event Participated

10th International ISTR Conference (Universita Degli Studi Di Siena, Italy, July 10 – 13, 2012): Nishant Shah was a panelist in the session, "Theoretical Grounding of Civic Driven Change". He gave a public lecture on Beyond Normative Citizenships: Exploring the ‘New’ in Digital Activism.

Telecom

Building Knowledge and Capacity around Telecommunication Policy in India

Ford Foundation has given a grant of USD 200,000 to CIS to build expertise in the area of telecommunications in India. The following are the latest outputs:

Fixed Line Telephones (by Jürgen Kock): This module discusses the features and the various stages of the development of fixed line telephones, its early history, the basic principle of a fixed line telephone system, plain old telephone service, digital telephones, cordless phones to today's features of fixed line telephones.
Different Forms of Video Communication (by Tina Mani): In this module, Tina Mani takes us through some of the common forms of video communication such as video calling, video conferencing, telepresence and video sharing.
Broadband Policy, 2004 (by Snehashish Ghosh): In this module, Snehashish Ghosh tells us that the Policy was laid down by the Government of India in order to realize the potential of broadband services. It aimed at enhancing the quality of life by implementation of tele-education, tele-medicine, e-governance, entertainment, etc.
Cable Television Networks Regulation Act, 1955 (by Snehashish Ghosh): In this module, Snehashish examines the purpose of the legislation, the persons affected by it, the administrative bodies which come under the Act, the penalties (including the consequences in case of non-compliance), appeal process and the debates surrounding the legislation.
The Indian Wireless Telegraphy Act, 1933 (by Snehashish Ghosh): In this module, Snehashish Ghosh throws light on the main objective of the Act — that of regulating the possession of wireless telegraphy apparatus.

RTI Application

Use of DPI Technology by ISPs — Response by the Department of Telecommunications : Smiti Mujumdar on behalf of CIS filed requests under the Right to Information with the Department of Telecommunications, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, BSNL and MTNL, asking a number of questions related to the use of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology by Internet Service Providers (ISP) in India and corresponding regulations. A scanned version of the response from the Department of Telecommunications is hosted online.

Column in Business Standard

Decision Analysis for Interest Rates (Shyam Ponappa, Business Standard, July 5, 2012): The discipline of systematic evaluation through applying process-flow and decision analysis — in this example, of financial logic — can help make reasoned, practical decisions, whether for interest rates, or for resolving issues in power supply, or in telecommunications, spectrum and broadband.

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/about/newsletters/july-2012-bulletin

Role of the US Tech Companies in Government Surveillance: A Lecture by Christopher Soghoian

praskrishna — 2012-08-26T11:03:19Z

Christopher Soghoian will deliver a lecture on the role US tech companies play in assisting government surveillance at the Centre for Internet & Society office in Bangalore on August 27, 2012, from 5.00 p.m. to 7.00 p.m.

Your internet, phone and web application providers are all, for the most part, in bed with US and other foreign government agencies. They all routinely disclose their customers' communications and other private data to law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Worse, firms like Google and Microsoft specifically log data in order to assist the government. How many government requests does your ISP get for its customers' communications each year? How many do they comply with? How many do they fight? How much do they charge for the surveillance assistance they provide? Who knows? Most companies have a strict policy of not discussing such topics.

The differences in the privacy practices of the major players in the telecommunications and internet applications market are significant. Some firms retain identifying data for years, while others retain no data at all; some voluntarily provide the government access to user data, while other companies refuse to voluntarily disclose data without a court order; some companies charge government agencies when they request user data, while others disclose it for free. For an individual, later investigated by the police or intelligence services, the data retention practices adopted by their phone company or email provider can significantly impact their freedom.

Unfortunately, although many companies claim to care about end-user privacy, and some even that they compete on their privacy features, none seem to be willing to compete on the extent to which they assist or resist the government in its surveillance activities. Because information about each firms' practices is not publicly known, consumers cannot vote with their wallets, and pick service providers that best protect their privacy.

This talk will pierce the veil of secrecy surrounding these practices. Based upon a combination of Freedom of Information Act requests, off the record conversations with industry lawyers, and investigative journalism, the practices of many of these firms will be revealed.

Christopher's Personal Experience

In the year 2006, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided Christopher’s home at 2.00 a.m. seizing his personal documents and computers. Two attorneys, Stephen Braga and Jennifer Granick came to his defence. With their expert assistance, Christopher was able to get back his possessions within three weeks, and FBI’s criminal and TSA’s civil investigations were closed without any charges being filed.

Jennifer Granick came to Christopher’s assistance once again (joined by Steve Leckar) in 2010 after the Federal Trade Commission’s Inspector General investigated Christopher for using his government badge to attend a closed-door surveillance industry conference. It was at that event that Christopher recorded an executive from wireless carrier ‘Sprint’ bragging about the eight million times his company had obtained GPS data on its customers for law enforcement agencies in the previous years.

To know more, read Christopher Soghoian’s dissertation titled "The Spies We Trust: Third Party Service Providers and Law Enforcement Surveillance". [PDF, 1056 Kb]

About Christopher Soghoian

Christopher Soghoian is a privacy researcher and activist, working at the intersection of technology, law and policy. He is a Principal Technologist and Senior Policy Analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union and is based in Washington, D.C.

Soghoian completed his Ph.D. at Indiana University in 2012, which focused on the role that third party service providers play in facilitating law enforcement surveillance of their customers. In order to gather data, he has made extensive use of the Freedom of Information Act, sued the Department of Justice pro se, and used several other investigative research methods. His research has appeared in publications including the Berkeley Technology Law Journal and been cited by several federal courts, including the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Between the years, 2009-2010, he was the first ever in-house technologist at the Federal Trade Commission's Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, where he worked on investigations of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and Netflix. Prior to joining the FTC, he co-created the Do Not Track privacy anti-tracking mechanism now adopted by all of the major web browsers.

He is a TEDGlobal 2012 Fellow, was an Open Society Foundations Fellow between the years, 2011-2012, and was a Student Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University between 2008 and 2009.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/role-of-us-tech-companies-in-govt-surveillance

The Spies We Trust: Third Party Service Providers and Law Enforcement Surveillance

praskrishna — 2012-07-31T04:47:48Z

Christopher Soghoian's dissertation was submitted to the faculty of the Graduate School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree "Doctor of Philosophy" in the School of Informatics, Department of Computer Science, Indiana University

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/spies-we-trust

Citizen Activism the Past Decade

Nilofar Ansher — 2015-04-24T11:52:44Z

Call for Contributions to the ‘Digital Natives with a Cause?’ newsletter, ‘Citizen Activism the Past Decade’. Deadline: August 15, 2012.

The past decade (2001 – 2011) has been marked by unprecedented democratic protests across the globe. Not only have citizens risen against autocratic regimes or systemic corruption, which is not unprecedented in itself, but also, a spark in one region inflamed solidarity among neighbouring nations to pick up the placards and march for change. Plenty has been written about the strategic deployment of social media, Web 2.0 platforms and Smart-gadgets by the digital natives (the youth and the old alike) to rewrite the rules of citizen activism.

In this issue of the newsletter, we explore the mechanics of activism aided by media: web, social, digital, and traditional. What do we understand by a cause and how does it find resonance at the local and global platforms? Is the digital native a community player or a global citizen? How do digital natives connect, collaborate, mobilize and bring about their visions of change? The aim is to not establish or reinforce these dichotomies, if indeed they exist, but to understand the dimensions of the stage the digital natives operate on and if that stage is a synecdoche for global youth-led civic action. A case in point: ‘Slut Walk’ moved from being a one-off march in Toronto to becoming a global movement and came full circle when small towns and cities across the world organized protest marches with a local ‘twist’.

Topics that contributors can explore:

What do we understand by citizen activism? How has citizen activism changed over the last 10 years with the advent of new media tools?
Youth as 'change agents'. Are protest movements youth oriented today? How are civil rights movements of the past decade different from the wave of movements that marked the 60s? (women's lib, LGBT rights, civil rights, disability rights). Explore the mechanics of organizing, mobilizing and measuring the success of a campaign in both the cases.
Participatory Politics and Web 2.0 | Value and power of the Network in effecting change | Mobilizing support and consensus within the network |studies on politically active youth using social media | digital natives as apathetic citizens | Is Slacktivism still a misunderstood term?
Kony 2012 video campaign | interviews | what went wrong and what did they do right? | Rise of DIY activism | mechanics of digital activism | resources, tools and strategies
Rise of the ‘Glocal’ (global with local resonance) cause | Slut Walk and Co – global protests inspiring local campaigns | Children of globalization with global stakes supporting local causes – how does this work?
Role of new media as a vehicle for civic engagement | Are new media and traditional media mutually exclusive in influencing citizen action? | How are new media strategies deployed by citizens in comparison with traditional media engagement?
Learning from past campaigns: citizen activism initiates and strategies in history that inspire modern campaigns (The ‘Walk to Work’ protest in Uganda protesting against fuel price hike and removal of subsidies is similar to Mahatma Gandhi’s Dandi March in pre-independence India to protest against Salt Tax).
Finding commonalities in citizen activism across Asia, Africa and Middle East | Explore the citizen action campaigns that have shaped political discourse in the past decade | Explore some of the most successful youth action campaigns of the past decade
How do we measure value, quality and success of campaigns? When does a protest officially end? Studies that explore the life-cycle of a protest or movement
The future of activism: new technologies, new demography, new forms of engagement | art and activism | Gamification
Role of non-governmental organizations and civil society networks in fostering political change | collaboration between NGOs and social media activists / independent protesters
State and the empowered citizen | State response to protest | surveillance and censorship
Technologies of protest
Studying citizen activism | digital native research methodology to study citizen activism

To know more about the topics you can write about, please write to: nilofar.ansh@gmail.com (Nilofar Ansher, Community Manager). Contributions can be in the form of essays, notes, commentaries, reviews (book or paper), dialogues and chat transcript, poems, sketches / graphics. Essay word count between 800-1,600 words. Send your entries along with a brief bio and a profile picture by August 15, 2012.

View previous issues of the 'Digital Natives with a Cause?' newsletter here: http://cis-india.org/digital-natives/newsletter

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/digital-natives/citizen-activism-the-past-decade

Open letter to Hillary Clinton on Internet Freedom

sunil — 2012-09-04T08:28:02Z

Last month I wrote an open letter to Hillary Clinton. It was based on a presentation I that I made during a panel discussion at a Google sponsored conference titled Internet at Liberty 2012 in Washington DC on May 24, 2012.

Sunil Abraham's article was published in Thinking Aloud on July 17, 2012

The question that my panel tried to grapple with was "In a world where nearly nine out of ten Internet users are not American, what is the responsibility of United States institutions in promoting internet freedom?" My co-panelists were Cynthia Wong who is with the Centre for Democracy and Technology, Mohamed El Dahshan a writer and journalist, Dunja Mijatovic the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media.

Internet freedom is a curious subject. It is a technology specific liberty - for a moment consider television freedom. The US has more Muslims than India has Christians. But Indian television in the average hotel comes in hundreds and there are at least 3 channels of Christian preaching. But US television in hotels is usually less than 50 channels with no channels of Islamic preaching. In fact even the reception of secular channels from the Islamic World like Al Jazeera is still difficult in America. Can we accuse the US of not having television freedom since their television features Christian evangelists but not Muslim evangelists? Should it be part of India's foreign policy to evangelize television freedom given that there is a large domestic industry with clear international potential?

In an ideal world - citizens will possess technology-neutral freedom to communication and expression. But nothing can be farther from the truth. Communication technologies are regulated using a plethora of policies and practices and very often these have a chilling effect on freedoms.

The following is my response to the technology-specific demands for deregulation from the US Government.

Text of the Open Letter[2]

Recognise Access to Knowledge (A2K) as pre-condition for freedom of expression: There is no difference between aggressive enforcement of imbalanced and obsolete intellectual property laws and censorship. The need of the moment is not more enforcement to protect obsolete business models against the everyday practices of ordinary netizens but rather the reform of intellectual property law (levies, broader exceptions and limitations, pools, statutory and compulsory licenses, prizes etc.) to keep pace with innovations in technology and the production of knowledge and culture.

Recognise privacy as pre-condition for security: The alleged tension between privacy and security is a false dichotomy. Blanket surveillance by design compromises security. Surveillance is like salt in cooking — essential in very small quantities but dangerous even if slightly in excess. Blanket surveillance technologies are only going make things easier for — and will only serve as targets for — current and future online villains.

Don't lose the moral high-ground: Remember, with great power comes great responsibility. Other countries are waiting to cherry pick from your worst practices. Also don't use trade agreements to selectively export components of US policy without the accompanying safeguards for civil liberties and rights. Citizens in oppressive and authoritarian states are depending on the US government, courts and civil society to protect their rights online. Don't undermine their capacity to shame their governments by holding up the US as the example of 'how to get things right'. They urgently need the US government to lead by example.

Recognise that freedom of expression has become a trade issue: This is unfortunate but this is true — thanks to the precedent set by the developed world when it came to asymmetric trade negotiations. Just as the US is interested in protecting the interests of its corporations in global markets — other governments are keen protect the interests of their own corporations. The optimal solution in this case is where all countries and corporations are equally unsatisfied. This will remain a continuing discussion.

Address developing country anxieties around critical internet infrastructure: Security by obscurity will no longer do — security by transparency through open standards, technologies and governance is the only way to fears and build a trust-worthy and secure Internet for all of us. For example, there is urgent need to develop standards for supply chain audits of information infrastructure. The US has dealt with the fear of back doors by banning the use of hardware and software from countries it does not trust. The developing world is not sure if there are back-doors in hardware and software manufactured by US corporations.

Time has comes to address this and other related anxieties.

Appreciate diversity in nomenclature: 'Freedom' and 'liberty' may be appropriate terms to use in the United States of America. But openness may be more in countries that are not yet full and robust liberal democracies. The Internet Governance Forum for example uses 'openness' instead of 'freedom'. Openness is also preferred because it includes 'freedom of expression', 'freedom of information' (also known as right to information, access to information or public and 'free knowledge' (free software, open standards, open content, open access, open data, open educational resources, etc.)

Don't be too instrumental in your interventions: Don't undermine the local credibility of like-minded civil society, think-tanks and research organisations by being too directive in your support. Managerialism will undermine reform of policies and practices in information societies and so does inappropriate/premature monitoring and evaluation (for example, looking for explicit attribution in terms of casual connections between your actions and outcomes). There is a need to support greater reflexivity in the global information society by developing institutional capacity in developing countries through unrestricted funding. True critical thinking is the foundation of both scientific progress and open societies. Go out of your way to find and support those who disagree with you. Protect the plural foundation of our networked society!

Video

Sunil Abraham was a speaker along with Cynthia Wong, Mohamed El Dahshan and Dunja Mijatovic in Plenary IV Debate 3 at the Internet at Liberty 2012 event organised by Google on May 24, 2012.

View the video on YouTube

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/open-letter-to-hillary-clinton

Constitutional Analysis of the Information Technology (Intermediaries' Guidelines) Rules, 2011

ujwala — 2012-10-31T08:44:41Z

Ujwala Uppaluri provides a constitutional analysis of the Information Technology (Intermediaries' Guidelines) Rules notified in April 2011, and examines its compatibility with Articles 14, 19, 21 of the Constitution of India.

Summary of Salient Provisions

The Information Technology (Intermediaries’ Guidelines) Rules, 2011 (‘the Intermediary Guidelines’) were notified in April, 2011 as rules enacted in exercise of powers conferred under section 87(2)(zg) read with Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (as amended) (‘the IT Act’).

Rule 2 of the Intermediary Guidelines imports definitions for key terms from the IT Act. Notably, this includes an importation of Section 2 (w) by Rule 2 (i), which defines “intermediary” broadly in the following terms:

“ “intermediary”, with respect to any particular electronic records, means any person who on behalf of another person receives, stores or transmits that record or provides any service with respect to that record and includes telecom service providers, network service providers, internet service providers, web-hosting service providers, search engines, online payment sites, online-auction sites, online-market places and cyber cafes;”

Rule 3 whose margin note indicates that it is limited to due diligence measures to be adhered to by intermediaries nevertheless also raises other liabilities by creating a regime to censor content, pre-publication as well as once content has been made publically available online.

Sub-rule (2) of Rule 3 inventories the classes of content which are deemed actionable, with only clause (i), clause (c), clause (e) and, arguably clause (h), of that rule addressing the national interest, public order and security restrictions cognizable under Article 19(2) of the Constitution. The remainder of grounds includes private claims such as content which “belongs to another person”[1], or otherwise infringes proprietary rights[2], or is “defamatory”[3]. Still others are terminologically indeterminate and purely subjective, with the terms “grossly harmful”, “harassing” and “disparaging” being examples.

This sub-rule also includes a number of redundancies. While there is reference to libelous as well as defamatory content in clause (b), it is well established that Indian law does not admit of the former concept, instead dissolving the common law distinction between the two to treat them alike.[4] There is also clause (e), which prohibits content which is all ready illegal for violating the provisions of an existing statute and the residuary phrasing of the clause (b)’s reference to content which is “otherwise unlawful in any manner whatever”.

The sub-rules immediately following the list in Rule 3(2) address the consequences of users publishing content listed in that rule:

Sub-rule (3) of rule 3 provides that intermediaries will not knowingly deal in any manner whatsoever, whether by hosting, publication, transmission or otherwise, with any content of the types that are listed in the previous clause.

Sub-rule (4) of rule 3 creates a complaints mechanism in respect of content incompatible with Rule 3 (2) by requiring intermediaries to disable access to offending content within 36 hours of obtaining knowledge themselves or on being brought to “actual knowledge” by an “affected person”. The Intermediaries Guidelines do nothing to clarify what would amount to “actual knowledge”, to indicate in unambiguous terms, which parties would have sufficient locus to bring complaints in order to be deemed an “affected person” for the purposes of these provisions or to suggest that there is a procedure or timeline for action by the intermediary, such that requirements such notice to the author of the content and time for the preparation of a defence by the author and/or the intermediary are accounted for. Rule 3 (4) also requires that all information which is taken down be preserved, along with “associated records” for a duration of atleast ninety days for investigative purposes.

Sub-rule (5) of rule 3 mandates that intermediaries inform users that non-compliance with the Intermediary Guidelines, inter alia, is a ground for the exercise of their right to terminate access or usage rights and remove non-compliant content.

Finally, sub-rule (11) of rule 3 requires intermediaries to name Grievance Officers to receive complaints on any matters relating to the computer resources made available by the intermediary, including for non-compliance or harm in terms of Rule 3 (2). This officer is bound to respond to the complaint within one month from the date of receipt of the complaint.

In the result, the Intermediary Guidelines create a two-track system by which private censorship is legitimized online. In the first place, intermediaries can take down content on their own motion where they are of the opinion that the content falls under any of the grounds enumerated in Rule 3 (2) or, alternatively, do so in response to a complaint, in terms of Rule 3 (4).

In addition to the provisions relating to censorship, the Intermediary Guidelines also provide for information to be given over to government agencies making a request with lawful authority and in writing under sub-rule (7) of rule 3, for data protection measures in accordance with the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Information) Rules, 2011 notified under Section 43A of the IT Act to be adhered to (sub-rule (8) of rule 3) and for intermediaries to report and share information realting to cyber security with CERT-In (sub-rule (9) of rule 3).

Areas of Infirmity

It is doubtful whether the Intermediary Guidelines could pass constitutional muster, on several grounds:

Compatibility with Article 19 (1) (a) and (2)

(a) Applicability of Article 19 (2) to Rule 3 (2) Grounds

In Romesh Thappar v. State of Madras[5] the Supreme Court held that the freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a) includes the freedom to propogate and disseminate ideas. It also held that very narrow and stringent limits govern the permissibility of legislative abridgment of the right of free speech. Ordinarily, any abridgement of free speech by means of censorship must be compatible with one or more of the grounds provided for under Article 19 (2), and the Supreme Court held in Express Newspapers (Private) Ltd. v. Union of India[6]that limitations on the exercise of the Article 19(1)(a) right which do not fall within Article 19(2) cannot be upheld.

Further, the right to free speech applies across all media, and the internet is no exception. In Secretary, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting v. Cricket Association of Bengal[7], the Supreme Court reflected the understanding that where media are different, such that the treatment accorded to them must be different in accordance with that indicia of difference, it will treat them as such in order to uphold fundamental rights. More specifically, in Ajay Goswami v. Union of India[8], the Supreme Court opined (in obiter) that the internet, as a unique medium of expression, deserved a different standard of protection than other mediums that have preceded it.

Rule 3 (2) of the Intermediary Guidelines, which lists the grounds for censorship, is not complaint with Article 19 (2) for two reasons:

First, many of the grounds mentioned have no constitutional basis whatsoever. Rule 3 (2) prohibits, inter alia, content which “grossly harmful”, “harassing”, “invasive of another’s privacy”, “hateful”, “disparaging”, “grossly offensive” or “menacing”, in addition to content which is simply illegal, and should be actionable ex post rather than prohibited ex ante (content infringing intellectual property under Rule 3 (2) (d), for example). Most of the terms employed are not legal standards, but merely subjective indicators of personal sensitivities, while still others though legal do not figure in Article 19 (2). Since the whole scheme of the Intermediary Guidelines is premised on these extra-constitutional grounds, they are, as a whole, subject to being to being struck down.

Second, the restriction is unreasonable because instead of preserving rights online in accordance with Ajay Goswami, the Intermediary Guidelines unjustifiably abridge the right to speak and receive information on the internet. The Intermediary Guidelines overreach in their scope, by including as actionable content which is not itself punishable when communicated via any other medium. For example, disparaging speech, as long as it is not defamatory, is not criminalised in India, and cannot be because the Constitution does not allow for it. Similarly, content about gambling in print is not unlawful, but now all Internet intermediaries are required to remove any content that promotes gambling.

(b) Nature of Censorship: Directness of Censorship and Legitimacy of Private and Prior Censorship

In judging whether a statute is constitutional, the effect that the statute will have on the fundamental rights of citizens must be examined. The Supreme Court held in Bennett Coleman & Co. v. Union of India[9] that the test was to examine whether the effect of an impugned action was to abridge a fundamental right, notwithstanding its object.

Further, while it is true in light of the Supreme Court’s holdings in Prakash Jha Productions v. Union of India[10] that pre-censorship is permissible within the Indian constitutional scheme, this permissibility is qualified. Prior censorship may be undertaken only within closely regulated circumstances, such as under the grounds in the Cinematograph Act, 1952, and even then, only by an appropriately empowered governmental entity.

The Intermediary Guidelines create mechanisms for the abridgement of the freedom of speech which amount to indirect and unjustifiable prior censorship, contrary to Article 19 (2):

Firstly, while the state does not itself censor under these rules, it has empowered private, commercial entities to do so vide the Intermediary Guidelines. These rules thus transfer the executive power of censorship to private intermediaries. This amounts to an indirect form of censorship for the purposes of the Bennett Coleman test and has the result of increased censorship on the Internet because the state granted legislative sanction to such a system, although it does not censor by itself or through a state agency. The Intermediary Guidelines, and specifically Rule 3 (4) read with Rule 3 (2), place a burden on intermediaries to decide on the lawfulness of content as a pre-condition for their statutory exemption from liability. An intermediary, on receiving a complaint, to ensure that it continues to receive the protection offered by Section 79 of the IT Act, will be forced to disable access to the content posted by a user. Thus, the direct effect of the rules will be strict censoring of content posted on-line by users. The rules will have a direct effect on the fundamental right of freedom of speech and expression guaranteed under Article 19(1) of the Constitution unreasonable restrictions on fundamental rights, that are imposed by a statute or executive orders are liable to be struck down as unconstitutional.

Secondly, while prior censorship is permissible only in a strictly limited range of cases, the Intermediary Guidelines allow for an unrestrained and unlimited degree of prior and arguably invisible censorship. Rule 3 of the Intermediary Guidelines clearly envisages such a system of prior censorship. Whereas the consequences for passively displaying content incompatible with Rule 3(2) would be a complete waiver and dissolution of the Section 79 immunity that would ordinary accrue to neutral intermediaries, intermediaries or complainants have no obligation in respect of ensuring the tenability of complaints and the grounds cited in them. The Intermediary Guidelines do not draw a distinction between arbitrary actions of an intermediary and take-downs subsequent to a request. Further, the inclusion of a residuary clause in Rule 3 (2) (b) allowing pre-censorship of content which is “unlawful in any manner whatever”, also indicates that the Intermediary Guidelines allow the use of the exceptional instrument of not only allows private censorship, but that they actively encourage it as the default rule rather than the exception without any justification whatsoever.

(c) Vagueness and Overbreadth: Possibility for Over-Censorship

Vagueness in the terms of a restriction to free speech is grounds for it to be struck down, even where the ground is apparently broadly constitutional. The Supreme Court held in Sakal Papers (P) Ltd. v. Union of India[11] that the Constitution must be interpreted in order to enable citizens to enjoy their rights to fullest measure, subject to limited permissible restrictions. In Romesh Thapar[12] the Supreme Court also held that a legislation authorizing the imposition of restrictions on free speech in language wide enough to cover restrictions which are permissible as well as extra-constitutional will be held to be wholly unconstitutional.

The grounds listed in Rule 3 (2) of the Intermediary Guidelines are highly subjective, private interest grounds which are not defined either in the Intermediary Guidelines or in the IT Act itself. These include terms such as “grossly harmful”, “harassing”, “invasive of another’s privacy”, “hateful”, “disparaging”, “grossly offensive” or “menacing”. Consequently, the Intermediary Guidelines constitute unreasonable restrictions on freedom of speech, with Rule 3 (2) containing vague terms which, in addition to falling beyond the purview of Article 19(2), cover only private and subjective grounds, incapable of objective definition or application.

Further, the Intermediary Guidelines do no precisely define the term “affected person” employed in Rule 3 (4). Thus, complaints from any party, including those uninvolved or unaffected by content must all be complied with, without qualification.

In the result, the vagueness of the grounds in Rule 3 (2) and the diffuse terminology of “affected person” leaves Rule 3 (2) grounds serving as placeholders for whatever claim a complainant, having no locus whatsoever, chooses to bring, without regard for whether it is constitutional or even legal. Online content is thus treated as presumptively illegal and take down of content as the presumptive course of action. Additionally, there is a further consequence to the vagueness and overbreadth of the terms in Rule 3 (2): because of the indeterminacy in the grounds listed thereunder, intermediaries tasked with enforcing the law will tend to err on the side of caution and censor, rather than keep speech accessible online. There is empirical evidence to show that cautious intermediaries will over-censor and over comply with complaints in order to avoid liability under Section 79 of the IT Act.[13]

(d) Contravention of International Human Rights Norms & Horizontal Application

The censorship regime constructed by the Intermediary Guidelines is non-compliant not only with domestic requirements under the Constitution, but also with India’s obligations under international human rights law under Articles 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (‘UDHR’) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (‘ICCPR’), under the UN Human Rights Council’s Report of the Special Rapporteur Frank La Rue on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression (2011)[14](‘Special Rapporteur’s Report’) and the UN Human Rights Council Resolution on Internet Freedom (2012)[15] (‘UN Internet Freedom Resolution’).

While the ICCPR as well as the UDHR guarantee a right to free speech “through any…media of…choice” in their respective Articles 19, the Special Rapporteur’s Report and the UN Internet Freedom Resolution recognize the need for special efforts to be undertaken by states to preserve free speech on the internet. The former document justifies censorship only in the most limited circumstances and makes specific mention of the commercial interests that may be implicated in delivering free speech.

Through the Intermediary Guidelines, the Indian state creates a system by which the right to free speech can be systematically violated by private and undisclosed entities and even empowers them to do so, without imposing any constitutional safeguards whatsoever. Thus, egregious violations of the right to free speech and expression are a direct and inevitable consequence of the Intermediary Guidelines. To the degree that the Indian Supreme Court has enagaged with free speech online, it appears from Ajay Goswami that it would apply standards consistent with international law obligations to rectify the Intermediary Guidelines to meet them.

Further, the Indian Supreme Court has held, where necessary for their true enjoyement, that fundamental rights may involve a degree of horizontality in their application. In other words, private action could be guided by fundamental rights, such as in Vishaka v. State of Rajasthan[16] which evidences the Supreme Court’s willingness to hold that private entities could be held to constitutional and international human rights law standards where that is necessary for the real rather than illusory enjoyment of fundamental rights.

As a result, the Intermediary Guidelines are also liable to be struck down for their failure to recognize and account for the role of private interests while empowering them with the right to curtail fundamental rights.

Compatibility with Article 21

(a) Adverse Impact on Privacy (and consequently on Free Speech)

A constitutional right to privacy has been read into Article 21’s guarantee of life and personal liberty in several instances by the Supreme Court. The State is consequently under an obligation to refrain from interfering, whether by itself or through any of its agencies, with private lives and spaces. By the same coin, laws which encourage unwarranted state or societal intrusions into private life will contravene the victim’s Article 21 right. In People’s Union for Civil Liberties v. Union of India,[17] the Supreme Court held that Article 21 privacy protected individuals against the interception and monitoring of private communications by the state in the absence of sufficient safeguards.

Also, an individual’s privacy interests in information relating to him are not dissolved merely because information is not confidential or because another entity has some property interest in that information. In District Registrar and Collector, Hyderabad v. Canara Bank[18], the Supreme Court recognized that even where the search of private documents was concerned, Article 21 protected “persons not places”, i.e., that the privacy interest did not vest in property or communications but, rather, in the rightsholder himself.

The Intermediary Guidelines include no limits whatsoever on the scope of disclosures that government agencies can demand or expect to retain, in contravention of Article 21.

Specifically, Rule 3 (4), which requires data retention for a statutory minimum of ninety days of content taken down as well as “associated records”, violates users’ rights to privacy. In addition to the financial and technical burden (in storing and securing data) imposed by the Intermediary Guidelines in requiring potentially unlimited data retention by intermediaries, there is no clarity as to what or how much information precisely must be held in the form of “associated records”. Instead of subjecting data to limited and closely qualified retention by private intermediaries, and thus limiting the impairment of the fundamental right to privacy to the minimum possible degree necessary, Rule 3 (4) imposes blanket data retention requirements.

Further, Rule 3 (7), which makes any information held by an intermediary subject to being disclosed to the government upon request is also inconsistent with the requirement that the right to life and personal liberty be violated only in accordance with fair, just and reasonable procedures. Notwithstanding that Rule 3 (7) is consistent with Section 67C of the IT Act and specific rules framed in regard to the surveillance of communications, it is also unconstitutional because it fails to include any safeguards whatsoever in the process of surveillance. These would include, as minimum obligatory conditions in light of PUCL, the requirement that the surveilled be informed of the surveillance and be allowed to challenge its propriety ex ante or its procedural regularity ex post, or atleast administrative or judicial review ex parte.

(b) Non-compliance with Due Process and Natural Justice Requirements

Article 21 explicitly includes a due process guarantee. This means that the right to life and personal liberty, and its constituent rights, can be interfered with only through constitutionally consistent procedures. A cornerstone of fair procedure, compliant with the rule of law, is the notion of natural justice. Consequently, Article 21 contemplates that the procedure by which fundamental rights are curtailed will satisfy natural justice principles.

In Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India,[19] the Supreme Court held that natural justice was not a rigid or mechanical term, but one that referred to those practices and principles that would ensure “fair play in action”. In addition the Court held that all deviations from natural justice requirements must be supported by a sufficiently justificatory “compelling state interest”. Specifically, in Union of India v. Tulsiram Patel[20], the Supreme Court held that the principle of natural justice required the satisfaction of the audi alteram partem rule, which consisted of several requirements, including the requirement that a person against whose detriment an action is taken be informed of the case against him and be afforded a full and fair opportunity to respond. Finally, in M.C. Mehta v. Union of India[21] the Supreme Court held that the absence of due notice and a reasonable opportunity to respond would vitiate any holding to the rightsholder’s detriment.

The Intermediary Guidelines fail to satisfy the requirement of natural justice, and particularly the rights to prior notice as well as that of the affected party to a hearing:

By requiring that content be taken down swiftly (within 36 hours of complaint, under Rule 3 (4)) and by failing to require the author of the content to be informed of the complaint and its contents, the Intermediary Guidelines violate the author’s right to notice and consequently affect his/her right to prepare and present a defence at all. In practice, authors of content which is the subject of a complaint may never know of the complaint or even of the fact of the take down, given the absence of any mechanism under the rules by which they could have been informed. In a scheme for silent, invisible censorship, authors are never afforded an opportunity to challenge the take down, just as they have no opportunity to rebut the initial complaint. In addition, at any event, it is the intermediary, a biased private entity whose immunity under Section 79 of the IT Act could be called into question based on the outcome, who must make the determination as to the legality of the content.

While there is nothing to prohibit intermediaries from informing authors on the receipt of a complaint, the limited time within which action must be taken means that such intermediaries would risk liability for non-compliance with the compliant and a waiver of their Section 79 immunity, where the content is not taken down, whether because communication does not occur within the 36 hour timeframe or because an author elects to resist takedown. By creating a system in which takedowns necessarily occur in response to complaints, irrespective of their legitimacy, the Intermediary Guidelines presume and rule in favour of the complainants and in favour of (private) censorship instead of presuming in favour of the preservation of the fundamental right to free speech, or even maintaining neutrality between the two ends.

Compatibility with Article 14

The guarantee of “equal protection of laws” requires equality of treatment of persons who are similarly situated, without discrimination inter se. It is a corollary that that persons differently situated cannot be treated alike. In E. P. Royappa v. State of Tamil Nadu[22] the Supreme Court held that arbitrary or unfair actions necessarily run counter to Article 14. The Supreme Court explained in M/S Sharma Transport v. Government of Andhra Pradesh[23] that arbitrary actions are actions which are unreasonable, non-rational done capriciously or without adequate determining principle, reason or in accordance with due judgment. In addition, Article 14 also requires that state action be reasonable. In Mahesh Chandra v. Regional Manager, U.P. Financial Corporation[24] it was held that discretion must be exercised objectively, and that what is not fair or just will be unreasonable, and subject to being struck down as unconstitutional.Additionally, Article 14 also requires that the basis upon which classifications are undertaken for the purposes of same or differential treatment be reasoned and fair. The Supreme Court held in Sube Singh v. State of Haryana[25] that the state’s failure to support a classification on the touchstone of reasonability, with the existence of intelligible differentia or the rational basis of achieving a stated object, will be ground for it to be held arbitrary and unreasonable. Finally, all state action having the potential to curtail Article 14 must be reasonable, justifiable, undertaken in exercise of constitutional powers and be informed and guided by public interest. The Supreme Court held to this effect in Kasturi Lal Lakshmi Reddy v. State of Jammu and Kashmir[26].

The Intermediary Guidelines contravene Article 14 on the following grounds:

First, intermediaries who are not similarly situated are treated alike. Rule 2 (i) imports the IT Act’s omnibus definition of the term “intermediary”, such that all classes of intermediaries, ranging from intermediaries which control the architecture of the internet and the hardware which enables it to run (such as ISPs and DNS providers) to intermediaries that enable content creation, sharing and communications online (such as email clients, content aggregators, social networking services and content hosts), are empowered to censor and are required to comply with complaints regarding content. Intermediaries, for the purposes of the IT Act and the Intermediary Guidelines, thus refer to a large and disparate group of providers of services enabling access to as well as use of the Internet. Reasoned state action must recognize that their liabilities must necessarily vary with the specific type of service that each provides. The Intermediary Guidelines fail to do so, and are consequently incompatible with Article 14.

Second, the Intermediary Guidelines treat the same or similar content across media differently, without apparent justification. More specifically, users of the internet are unfairly discriminated against. All of the Rule 3 (2) grounds which are not explicitly mentioned in Article 19 (2) in particular reflect this discriminatory, unreasoned treatment. To illustrate, the prohibition under Rule 3 (2) on the display of any content online when it relates to gambling treats speakers using the internet differently from speakers communicating this content via any other medium of communication. Given that nothing in the nature of the medium itself attaches a new or different character to the content, criminality or liability must attach to such content in a medium-neutral fashion. So, while content qualifying as seditious under law remains so across media, whether it be print, audio or video broadcast or online, the same as not the case for communications on the internet. In other words, while gambling itself may be prohibited under law, speech or expression involving it is nowhere prohibited under law. While such content is legal and protected across print and broadcasting media, the same content is liable to take down online. This would amount to discriminatory treatment of equal content merely because speakers choose the internet, and the speech occurred online.

Third, the Intermediary Guidelines accord unrestrained discretion in the curtailment of fundamental rights to private functionaries, without any guidance whatsoever. This should have been the sole reserve of the state. In addition to the lack of guidance, the breadth of the grounds for censorship in Rule 3 (2), some of which are themselves incapable of precise and non-subjective application, means that private censorship can occur to an arguably unlimited degree. Expecting compliance with such terms, and attaching liability (for intermediaries) or a curtailment of fundamental rights (for generators of content), without the provision of a right to challenge or even, more fundamentally, be informed is both unreasonable and arbitrary.

Similarly, Rules 3 (4) and 3 (5) empower intermediaries to take down content without providing any realistic opportunity of hearing to its author. Intermediaries are accorded an adjudicatory role to the intermediary in deciding questions whether or not authors can access their fundamental right to free speech in the process. This role is ordinarily reserved for competent courts or administrative authorities, which are subject to constitutional checks and balances and a general obligation to preserve and promote fundamental rights. Assigning such functions to a self-interested private entity without any accountability whatsoever is both unreasonable as well as arbitrary.

Finally, the Intermediary Guidelines fail to account for the public interest because they directly restrict the public’s freedom of speech and expression, without any justifiable reason, and privilege the personal and not necessarily constitutional sensitivities of private complainants instead. Rule 3(3) in effect vests an extraordinary power of censorship in intermediaries, entities which operate on the basis of private interest and outside the limits of administrative or even the most basic human rights control. Safeguards must apply to power-bearers to the degree and in the manner required in relation to the nature of the power, rather than its holder, if fundamental rights are to be legislatively preserved. While the Supreme Court in A.K. Kraipak v. Union of India[27] extended the applicability of natural justice principles from judicial bodies alone and quasi-judicial bodies to administrative bodies as well, the applicability of such principles still remains limited to state entities. In other words, there is an acknowledged difficulty in applying public law standards to private, commercial entities.

The Intermediary Guidelines thus vest the right to abridge core fundamental rights (under Articles 14, 19 and 21) in private delegates operating outside public law controls that constrain the scope in which the power can be exercised and ensure that citizen interest can be preserved. In the alternative, they also failed to provide for other safeguards to prevent abuse to the detriment of fundamental rights private delegates of governmental power, even as they granted such powers in unlimited terms. As a result, the Intermediary Guidelines evidence thoughtless, arbitrary, unreasoned and unjust state action.

Vires vis á vis the Parent Act

While it is permissible within the constitutional scheme for legislative functions of the Parliament to be delegated to a degree, they may be struck down on several grounds. In general, per Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Pvt. Ltd. v. Union of India,[28] subordinate legislation can be challenged not only on any of grounds on which the parent legislation is vulnerable to challenge, but also on the grounds that it does not conform to parent statute, that it is contrary to other statutes or that it is unreasonable, in the sense that it is manifestly arbitrary. Notably, the Court also held here that subordinate legislation is liable to being struck down where it fails to conform to constitutional requirements, or, specifically that “it offends Article 14 or Article 19 (1) (a) of the Constitution”.

It is a well-accepted proposition that delegated legislation which travels outside the scope of its enabling law will not stand as valid. It was held in Agricultural Market Committee v. Shalimar Chemical Works Ltd [29] that a delegate cannot alter the scope of the act under which it has been it has been empowered to make rules, or even of a provision or principle included there under. In State of Karnataka v. Ganesh Kamath[30] the Supreme Court held that “it is a well settled principle of interpretation of statutes that the conferment of rule-making power by an Act does not enable the rule-making authority to make a rule which travels beyond the scope of the enabling Act or which is inconsistent there with or repugnant thereto”. Similarly, in KSEB v. Indian Aluminium Company[31], it held that“subordinate legislation cannot be said to be valid unless it is within the scope of the rule making power provided in the statute”.

The Intermediary Guidelines were enacted under Sections 79(2) and 87(2)(zg) of the Information Technology Act, 2000 (as amended). While the latter provision explicitly grants the Central Government rule-making powers by which it can lay out guidelines to be followed by intermediaries in order to comply with Section 79(2), it appears that the rules in their current form appear to have been drafted based on a misunderstanding of Section 79.

Section 79(2) itself merely clarifies the circumstances in which intermediaries can claim that intermediaries are not liable for content where they do not initiate the transmission of potentially actionable content or select its recipient, modify its contents and observe all necessary “due diligence” requirements under the IT Act and rules.

The extent to which the Intermediary Guidelines alter the intent and scope of section 79 (or other provisions of the IT Act, in some cases) clearly leaves them ultra vires the parent statute. The specific instances of deviation by the Intermediary Guidelines from the IT Act are listed below:

First, Rule 3 (3) is ultra vires section 79 of the IT Act. Where this rule expressly prohibits the hosting, publication or initiation of transmission of content described in Rule 3 (2), section 79 does not intend any prohibition. All that it does is to waive the immunity otherwise accorded to intermediaries where the conditions specified are not satisfied. In other words, the section is optional, rather than mandatory and punitive: whether or not an intermediary can claim immunity will depend on whether it chooses to comply with section 79 (2).

Second, Rule 3 (4) requires intermediaries to take steps to disable access to within 36 hours of receiving a complaint in relation thereto. This is inconsistent with section 69B of the IT Act, which lays down in detail, the procedure to be followed to disable access to information. Since section 69B is statutory law, Rule 3 (4), being mere delegated legislation, will have to yield in its favour.

Third, Rule 3 (7) is ultra vires sections 69 and 69B, and falls outside the scope of section 79 (2). Rule 3 (7) provides that intermediaries must comply with requests for information or assistance when required to do so by appropriate authorities. This provision has no relation to the contents of section 79, which regulates intermediaries’ liability for content, and under which these rules were notified. In addition, rules have already been issued under the properly relevant sections, namely sections 69 and 69B, to provide a procedure to be followed by the government for the interception, monitoring, and decryption of information held by intermediaries. Rule 3 (7) is not consistent with the rules under sections 69 and 69B, as it removes all safeguards that those rules included. Under the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Interception, Monitoring, and Decryption) Rules 2009, for instance, permission must be obtained from the competent authority before an intermediary can be directed to provide access to its records and facilities while Rule 3 (7) makes intermediaries answerable to virtually any request from any government agency.

[1]. Rule 3 (2) (a).

[2]. Rule 3 (2) (d).

[3]. Rule 3 (2) (b)

[4]. Section 499, Indian Penal Code, 1860 (“Defamation” is defined to include both written and spoken words).

[5]. AIR 1950 SC 124.

[6]. AIR 1958 SC 578.

[7]. AIR 1995 SC 1236.

[8].(2007) 1 SCC 170.

[9]. AIR 1973 SC 106.

[10]. (2011) 8 SCC 372.

[11]. AIR 1962 SC 305, ¶31.

[12]. Supra, n.5.

[13]. Centre for Internet & Society, Intermediary Liability in India: Chilling Effects on Free Expression on the Internet 2011 available at cis-india.org/internet-governance/chilling-effects-on-free-expression-on-internet/intermediary-liability-in-india.pdf.

[14]. UN Document no. A/HRC/17/27.

[15]. UN Document no. A/HRC/20/.13.

[16]. AIR 1997 SC 3011.

[17]. AIR 1997 SC 568.

[18]. (2005) 1 SCC 496.

[19]. 1978 SCR (2) 621.

[20]. AIR 1985 SC 1416.

[21]. AIR 1999 SC 2583.

[22]. AIR 1974 SC 555.

[23]. AIR 2002 SC 322.

[24]. AIR 1993 SC 935.

[25]. (2001) 7 SCC 545, 548, ¶10.

[26].1980 AIR 1992.

[27]. AIR 1970 SC 150.

[28]. AIR 1986 SC 515.

[29]. AIR 1997 SC 2502.

[30]. (1983) 2 SCC 40.

[31]. AIR 1976 SC 1031.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/constitutional-analysis-of-intermediaries-guidelines-rules