Centre for Internet and Society

Cambridge Analytica scandal: How India can save democracy from Facebook

sunil — 2018-03-28T15:44:00Z

Hegemonic incumbents like Google and Facebook need to be tackled with regulation; govt should use procurement power to fund open source alternatives.

The article was published in the Business Standard on March 28, 2018

The Cambridge Analytica scandal came to light when whistleblower Wylie accused Cambridge Analytica of gathering details of 50 million Facebook users. Cambridge Analytica used this data to psychologically profile these users and manipulated their opinion in favour of Donald Trump. BJP and Congress have accused each other of using the services of Cambridge Analytica in India as well. How can India safeguard the democratic process against such intervention? The author tries to answer this question in this Business Standard Special.

Those that celebrate the big data/artificial intelligence moment claim that traditional approaches to data protection are no longer relevant and therefore must be abandoned. The Cambridge Analytica episode, if anything, demonstrates how wrong they are. The principles of data protection need to be reinvented and weaponized, not discarded. In this article I shall discuss the reinvention of three such data protection principles. Apart from this I shall also briefly explore competition law solutions.

Collect data only if mandated by regulation

One, data minimization is the principle that requires the data controller to collect data only if mandated to do so by regulation or because it is a prerequisite for providing a functionality. For example, Facebook’s messenger app on Android harvests call records and meta-data, without any consumer facing feature on the app that justifies such collection. Therefore, this is a clear violation of the data minimization principle. One of the ways to reinvent this principle is by borrowing from the best practices around warnings and labels on packaging introduced by the global anti-tobacco campaign. A permanent bar could be required in all apps, stating ‘Facebook holds W number of records across X databases over the time period Y, which totals Z Gb’. Each of these alphabets could be a hyperlink, allowing the user to easily drill down to the individual data record.

Consent must be explicit, informed and voluntary

Two, the principle of consent requires that the data controller secure explicit, informed and voluntary consent from the data subject unless there are exceptional circumstances. Unfortunately, consent has been reduced to a mockery today through obfuscation by lawyers in verbose “privacy notices” and “terms of services”. To reinvent consent we need to bring ‘Do Not Dial’ registries into the era of big data. A website maintained by the future Indian data protection regulator could allow individuals to check against their unique identifiers (email, phone number, Aadhaar). The website would provide a list of all data controllers that are holding personal information against a particular unique identifier. The data subject should then be able to revoke consent with one-click. Once consent is revoked, the data controller would have to delete all personal information that they hold, unless retention of such information is required under law (for example, in banking law). One-click revocation of consent will make data controllers like Facebook treat data subjects with greater respect.

There must be a right to explanation

Three, the right to explanation, most commonly associated with the General Data Protection Directive from the EU, is a principle that requires the data controller to make transparent the automated decision-making process when personal information is implicated. So far it has been seen as a reactive measure for user empowerment. In other words, the explanation is provided only when there is a demand for it.

The Facebook feeds that were used for manipulation through micro-targeting of content is an example of such automated decision making. Regulation in India should require a user empowerment panel accessible through a prominent icon that appears repeatedly in the feed. On clicking the icon the user will be able to modify the objectives that the algorithm is maximizing for. She can then choose to see content that targets a bisexual rather than a heterosexual, a Muslim rather than a Hindu, a conservative rather a liberal, etc. At the moment, Facebook only allows the user to stop being targeted for advertisements based on certain categories. However, to be less susceptible to psychological manipulation, the user should be allowed to define these categories, for both content and advertisements.

How to fix the business model?

From a competition perspective, Google and Facebook have destroyed the business model for real news, and replaced it with a business model for fake news, by monopolizing digital advertising revenues. Their algorithms are designed to maximize the amount of time that users spend on their platforms, and therefore, don’t have any incentive to distinguish between truth and falsehood. This contemporary crisis requires three types of interventions: one, appropriate taxation and transparency to the public, so that the revenue streams for fake news factories can be ended; two, the construction of a common infrastructure that can be shared by all traditional and new media companies in order to recapture digital advertising revenues; and three, immediate action by the competition regulator to protect competition between advertising networks operating in India.

The Google challenge

With Google, the situation is even worse, since Google has dominance in both the ad network market and in the operating system market. During the birth of competition law, policy-makers and decision-makers acted to protect competition per se. This is because they saw competition as an essential component of democracy, open society, innovation, and a functioning market. When the economists from the Chicago school began to influence competition policy in the USA, they advocated for a singular focus on the maximization of consumer interest. The adoption of this ideology has resulted in competition regulators standing powerlessly by while internet giants wreck our economy and polity. We need to return to the foundational principles of competition law, which might even mean breaking Google into two companies. The operating system should be divorced from other services and products to prevent them from taking advantage of vertical integration. We as a nation need to start discussing the possible end stages of such a breakup.

In conclusion, all the fixes that have been listed above require either the enactment of a data protection law, or the amendment of our existing competition law. This, as we all know, can take many years. However, there is an opportunity for the government to act immediately if it wishes to. By utilizing procurement power, the central and state governments of India could support free and open source software alternatives to Google’s products especially in the education sector. The government could also stop using Facebook, Google and Twitter for e-governance, and thereby stop providing free advertising for these companies for print and broadcast media. This will make it easier for emerging firms to dislodge hegemonic incumbents.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/business-standard-march-28-2018-sunil-abraham-cambridge-analytica-scandal-how-india-can-save-democracy-from-facebook

ISIS and Recruitment using Social Media – Roundtable Report

Vidushi Marda, Aditya Tejus, Megha Nambiar and Japreet Grewal — 2016-12-16T02:19:16Z

The Centre for Internet and Society in collaboration with the Takshashila Institution held a roundtable discussion on “ISIS and Recruitment using Social Media” on 1 September 2016 from 5.00 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. at TERI in Bengaluru.

The objective of this roundtable was to explore the recruitment process and methods followed by ISIS on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter and to understand the difficulties faced by law enforcement agencies and platforms in countering the problem while understanding existing counter measures, with a focus on the Indian experience.

Reviewing Existing Literature

To provide context to the discussion, a few key pieces of existing literature on online extremism were highlighted. Discussing Charlie Winter’s “Documenting the Virtual Caliphate”, a participant outlined the multiple stages of the radicalisation process that begins with a person being exposed to general ISIS releases, entering an online filter bubble of like minded people, initial contact, followed by persuasion by the contact person to isolate the potential recruit from his/her family and friends. This culminates with the assignment of an ISIS task to such person. The takeaway from the paper, was the colossal scale of information and events put out by ISIS on the social media. It was pointed out that contrary to popular belief, ISIS publishes content under six broad themes: mercy, belonging, brutality, victimhood, war and utopia, least of which falls under the category of brutality which in fact garners the most attention worldwide. It was further elaborated that ISIS employs positive imagery in the form of nature and landscapes, and appeals to the civilian life within its borders. This strategy is that of prioritising quantity, quality, adaptability and differentiation while producing media. This strategy of producing media that is precise, adaptable and effective, according to the author, must be emulated by Governments in their counter measures, although there is no universal counter narrative that is effective. This effort, he stressed cannot be exclusively state-driven.

JM Berger’s “Making Countering Violent Extremism Work” was also discussed. Here, a slightly different model of radicalisation has been identified with potential recruits going through 4 stages: the first being that of Curiosity where there is exposure to violent extremist ideology, the second stage is Consideration where the potential recruit evaluates the ideology, the third being Identification where the individual begins to self identify with extremist ideology, and the last being that of Self-Critique which is revisited periodically. According to Berger, law enforcement need only be involved in the third stage identified in this taxonomy, through situational awareness programs and investigations. This paper stated that counter-messaging policies need not mimic the ISIS pattern of slick messaging. A data-driven study had found that suspending and suppressing the reach of violent extremist accounts and individuals on online platform was effective in reducing the reach of these ideologies, though not universally so. It also found that generic counter strategies used in the US was more efficient than targeted strategies followed in Europe.

Lack of Co-ordination, Fragmentation between the States and Centre

Speaking of the Indian scenario in particular, another participant brought to light the lack of co-ordination and consensus between the State and Central Governments and law enforcement agencies with respect to countering violent extremism with leads to a breakage in the chain of action. Another participant added that the underestimation of the problem at the state level coupled with the theoretical and abstract nature of work done at the Centre is another pitfall. While the fragmentation of agencies was stated to be ineffective, bringing them under the purview of a single agency was also proposed as an ineffective measure. It was instead suggested that a neutral policy body, and not an implementing body, should coordinate the efforts of the multiple groups involved.

Unreliable Intelligence Infrastructure

It was pointed out that countries are presently underequipped due to the lack of intelligence infrastructure and technical expertise. This was primarily because agencies in India tend to use off-the shelf hardware and software produced by foreign companies, and such heavy dependence on unreliable parts will necessarily be detrimental to building reliable security infrastructure. Emphasis was laid on the significance of collaboration and open-source intelligence in countering online radicalisation. An appeal was made to inculcate a higher IT proficiency, indigenous production of resources, funding, collaboration, integration of lower level agencies and more research to be produced in this regard.

Proactive Counter Narratives

The importance of proactive counter-narratives to extremist content was stressed on, with the possibility of generating inputs from government agencies and private bodies backing the government being discussed. Another solution identified was the creation and internal circulation of a clear strategy to counter the ISIS narrative and the public dissemination of research on online radicalization in the Indian context.

Policies of Social Media Platforms

The conversation moved towards understanding policies of social media. One participant shed light on a popular platform’s strategies against extremism, wherein it was pointed out that the site’s tolerance policy extends not only to directly extremist content but also content created by people who support violent extremism .The involvement of the platform with several countries and platforms in order to create anti-extremist messaging and its intention to expand these initiatives was in furtherance of its philosophy to prevent any celebration of violence. The participant further explained that research shows that anti-extremist content that made use of humour and a lighter tone was more effective than media which relied on gravitas.

Having identified the existing literature and current challenges, the roundtable concluded with suggestions for further areas of research:

Understanding the use of encrypted messaging services like Whatsapp and Telegram for extremism, and an analysis of these platforms in the Indian context. A deeper understanding of these services is essential to gauge the dimensions of the problem and identify counter measures.
A lexical analysis of Indian social media accounts to identify ISIS supporters and group them into meta-communities, similar to research done by the RAND Corporation
Collation of ISIS media packages was also flagged off as an important measure in order to have a dossier to present to the government. This would help policymakers gain context around the issue, and also help them understand the scale of the problem.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/isis-and-recruitment-using-social-media-2013-roundtable-report

We Truly are the Product being Sold

vidushi — 2016-09-01T02:08:37Z

WhatsApp has announced it will begin sharing user data such as names, phone numbers, and other analytics with its parent company, Facebook, and with the Facebook family of companies. This change to its terms of service was effected in order to enable users to “communicate with businesses that matter” to them. How does this have anything to do with Facebook?

The article was published in the Hindustan Times on August 31, 2016.

WhatsApp clarifies in its blog post, “... by coordinating more with Facebook, we’ll be able to do things like track basic metrics about how often people use our services and better fight spam on WhatsApp. And by connecting your phone number with Facebook’s systems, Facebook can offer better friend suggestions and show you more relevant ads if you have an account with them.”

WhatsApp’s further clarifies that it will not post your number on Facebook or share this data with advertisers. This means little because it will share your number with Facebook for advertisement. It is simply doing indirectly, what it has said it won’t do directly. This new development also leads to the collapsing of different personae of a user, even making public their private life that they have so far chosen not to share online. Last week, Facebook published a list of 98 data points it collects on users. These data points combined with your WhatsApp phone number, profile picture, status message, last seen status, frequency of conversation with other users, and the names of these users (and their data) could lead to a severely uncomfortable invasion of privacy.

Consider a situation where you have spoken to a divorce lawyer in confidence over WhatsApp’s encrypted channel, and are then flooded with advertisements for marriage counselling and divorce attorneys when you next log in to Facebook at home. Or, you are desperately seeking loans and get in touch with several loan officers; and when you log in to Facebook at work, colleagues notice your News Feed flooded with ads for loans, articles on financial management, and support groups for people in debt.

It is no secret that Facebook makes money off interactions on its platform, and the more information that is shared and consumed, the more Facebook is benefitted. However, the company’s complete disregard for user consent in its efforts to grow is worrying, particularly because Facebook is a monopoly. In order for one to talk to friends and family and keep in touch, Facebook is the obvious, if not the only, choice. It is also increasingly becoming the most accessible way to engage with government agencies. For example, Indian embassies around the world have recently set up Facebook portals, the Bangalore Traffic Police is most easily contacted through Facebook, and heads of states are also turning to the platform to engage with people. It is crucial that such private and collective interactions of citizens with their respective government agencies are protected from becoming data points to which market researchers have access.

Given Facebook’s proclivity for unilaterally compromising user privacy, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2011 charged the company for deceiving consumers by misleading them about the privacy of their information. Following these charges, Facebook reached an agreement to give consumers clear notice and obtain consumers’ express consent before extending privacy settings that they had established. The latest modification to WhatsApp’s terms of service seems to amount to a clear violation of this agreement and brings out the grave need to treat user consent more seriously.

There is a way to opt out of sharing data for Facebook ads targeting that is outlined by WhatsApp on its blog, which is the best example for a case of invasion-of-privacy-by-design. WhatsApp plans to ask the users to untick a small green arrow, and then click on a large green button that says “Agree” (which is the only button) so as to indicate that they are opting-out. The interface of the notice seems to be consciously designed to confuse users by using the power of default option. For most users, agreeing to terms and conditions is a hasty click on a box and the last part of an installation process. Predictably, most users choose to go with default options, and this specific design of the opt-out option is not meaningful at all.

In 2005, Facebook’s default profile settings were such that anyone on Facebook could see your name, profile picture, gender and network. Your photos, wall posts and friends list were viewable by people in your network. Your contact information, birthday and other data could be seen by friends and only you could view the posts that you liked. Fast forward to 2010, and the entire internet, not just all Facebook users, can see your name, profile picture, gender, network, wall posts, photos, likes, friends list and other profile data. There hasn’t been a comprehensive study since 2010, but one can safely assume that Facebook’s privacy settings will only get progressively worse for users, and exponentially better for Facebook’s revenues. The service is free and we truly are the product being sold.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/hindustan-times-vidushi-marda-august-31-2016-we-truly-are-the-product-being-sold

Facebook is censoring some posts on Indian Kashmir

praskrishna — 2016-07-28T03:03:53Z

Film makers, activists and journalists accused Facebook of blocking their accounts this week after they posted messages and images related to the violence in the trouble-torn province of Kashmir. In recent weeks, the India administered, Muslim-majority Kashmir state has been facing violence and curfews after protests erupted against the killing of a popular leader of a terrorist group.

The article by Rama Lakshmi was published by Washington Post on July 27. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

As people posted images, videos and stories about police violence and people injured by pellet wounds on Facebook, some discovered their accounts were disabled. On Monday, the account of Arif Ayaz Parrey, an editor with an environmental magazine in New Delhi, was disabled for more than a day. He administers the Facebook account of a discussion group called the Kashmir Solidarity Network, whose page was also removed.

“The Kashmir Solidarity page was started by a Kashmiri anthropology student in New York. This is not a hate forum, we share stories,” Parrey said. More than 47 people have died and hundreds injured in angry clashes between the police and protesters in Kashmir this month, the worst outbreak of bloody violence in six years in the region claimed by both India and neighboring Pakistan.

“Our Community Standards prohibit content that praises or supports terrorists, terrorist organizations or terrorism, and we remove it as soon as we’re made aware of it,” said a Facebook spokesman in India. “We welcome discussion on these subjects but any terrorist content has to be clearly put in a context which condemns these organizations or their violent activities.”India and the United States topped the list of governments that requestFacebook for details of accounts in the second half of 2015.

India has more than 340 million mobile Internet users and has the second largest number of Facebook users after the United States. The company is seeking to expand its footprint here by introducing a pared down version called “Free Basics.” But earlier this year, New Delhi shot it down, saying service providers cannot charge discriminatory prices for Internet users.

A journalist in Kashmir said that many who shared stories about a new band of militants and videos of police brutality have been blocked. “It looks more like Facebook censorship rather than something initiated by the government. Maybe they are trying to please the government proactively,” said Sunil Abraham, executive director of Center for Internet and Society. “Nevertheless it will have a chilling effect. You will think twice before exercising free speech on Facebook now.”

Ather Zia, a political commentator from Kashmir who teaches anthropology at the University of Northern Colorado, said after her account was disabled on Tuesday: "It is safe to assume creating awareness for Kashmir using social media or writing about the ground reality is under severe threat." Meanwhile, users struggled to restore their accounts on Wednesday as they uploaded new documents requested by the company.

“I use my Facebook account not as a personal page to tell people about my last haircut or last holiday. I use it for work, I share media stories about whatever bothers me in the universe,” said Sanjay Kak, a documentary film maker whose account was disabled Tuesday. “Nothing I shared can be considered inflammatory or incendiary.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/washington-post-july-27-2016-rama-lakshmi-facebook-is-censoring-some-posts-on-indian-kashmir

Tamil Nadu likely to hold Facebook accountable for suicide case

praskrishna — 2016-07-13T13:44:58Z

The recent suicide of a 21-year-old woman from Salem district in Tamil Nadu over her morphed pictures being uploaded on Facebook could turn into a flash-point between the state police and the world's most-popular social networking site.

The article by V. Prem Shanker was published in the Economic Times on July 13, 2016.

"We are exploring the possibility of holding Facebook accountable for the delay in responding to our requests since that was one of the factors which led to the young lady committing suicide," Salem superintendent of police Amit Kumar Singh told ET in an exclusive interaction. On June 23, the Salem police had received a complaint from the father of the 21-year-old stating that someone had uploaded her morphed nude pictures on Facebook. The father had requested the police to get the photographs removed from the site and also find and warn the perpetrator.

The police recorded the complaint the same evening and later sent what is called a 'Law Enforcement Online Request' to Facebook asking for details of the IP address from which the morphed photographs were uploaded on the website. Officials also requested Facebook to take down the objectionable photographs of the young woman.

Five days after the request was sent, Facebook responded with the IP address on June 28 and within 12 hours after that the police cracked the case and nabbed the suspect.

However, all this was a bit too late because the previous day, on June 27, the young woman had ended her life. Her morphed nude photographs were taken down only on the day of her death, according to the police.

"Apart from addressing Facebook, we also investigated the case from other angles but couldn't make headway. Thus, there was nothing we could do about the pictures still being online apart from waiting for Facebook to act," Singh said, adding "enforcement of compliance is a matter of grave concern."

Officials are considering charging Facebook with abetment to suicide and including Facebook in the chargesheet if the site is found culpable after investigations. However, the state police is said to be discussing with legal experts on how this can be done as there is no precedent for a website having been charged in a crime.

Facebook did not reply to an email seeking comment. Earlier in a communique, responding to criticisms of police inaction in this case, Singh had pointed out that "Only Facebook can block a page and it exercises this discretion as per its Facebook Community Standards and not the law of the land it is being viewed in. Facebook does not provide the police with any special powers to take down a page even if the police receive a cognizable complaint of identity theft and uploading of obscene content. There is no tool available, at least as of now, with the police to coerce or goad Facebook to act expeditiously even if the matter is very urgent and there is a flagrant violation of Indian law."

Experts point out that the disparity with which Facebook treats child abuse laws and copyright infringements as opposed to violation of women's rights is stark.

"Look at the war against child pornography. In the United Kingdom there is an independent foundation that has immunity under UK child pornography law. They generate a database and circulate it across all platforms and ensure that it is kept absolutely squeaky clean," points out Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bengaluru based research organisation, Centre for Internet and Society.

"There definitely needs to be a law to ensure that such platforms do not violate the law of the land, especially when it comes to women's rights. But in interim, the government can create an information escrow or a platform where the victims can place on record their problems and it is there for these sites to see and take action," Abraham added.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-v-prem-shanker-july-13-2016-tamil-nadu-likely-to-hold-facebook-accountable-for-suicide-case

FB & Google have already monopolised Indian cyberspace

praskrishna — 2016-07-08T15:59:46Z

In an interview with Catch, Sunil Abraham, executive director of Center for Internet & Society, puts the recent US-India cyber relationship framework into perspective. Abraham also talks about how Indian surveillance policies are outdated and why the country has failed to check the hegemonic tendencies of companies like Facebook and Google.

The interview was published by Catch News on July 3, 2016.

US-India signed a cyber relationship framework earlier this month. Could you explain some of the takeouts that may have important implications in the near future?

In the framework, both sides have made a "commitment to the multi-stakeholder model of Internet governance" - in immediate practical terms that means India will accept the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition proposed for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Unfortunately, as my colleague Pranesh Prakash points out "U.S. state control over the core of the internet's domain name system is not being removed by the transition that is currently underway."

India along with Brazil and other emerging powers should have insisted that the question of jurisdiction be addressed before the transition. We must remember, that the multi-stakeholder model is just a fancy name for open and participatory self-regulation by the private sector. While the multi-stakeholder model is useful as a complement to traditional state-led regulation, it cannot be used to protect human rights or ensure the security of a nation state.

[That is precisely why - the very next sentence in the announcement for the the framework for the US-India Cyber Relationship says "a recognition of the leading role for governments in cyber security matters relating to national security". This is because ICANN-style multistakeholderism requires all stakeholders to be on "equal footing" without "distinct roles and responsibilities". In other words, the governments are saying that the multistakeholder model is fine for all Internet Governance areas with the exception of Cyber Security. Given the limits of the multistakeholder model this is indeed the wise thing to do. Since American corporations dominate the Internet, US foreign policy has historically pushed for the multistakeholder model as fig leaf for forbearance and reduced foreign regulatory burden American corporations operating in other jurisdictions. Therefore India must not drink the multistakeholder cool-aid whole sale. It cannot afford a laissez-faire approach where it waits for corporations to self-regulate - it must regulate whenever public interest or human rights are harmed. In other words, it must go beyond the multistakeholder model and produce appropriate regulation where necessary. Needless to add - it must also deregulate in areas where harms don't exist. Apart from this many of the details of the announcement are positive steps that will increase security in India and the USA, and indeed the also across the world.]

What are some aspects of Intellectual Property Rights that should be looked at, in the context of the framework?

There is some language around Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) that should be examined carefully too. The US corporations benefit from a maximalist IP regime. But Make in India, Digital India and Startup India all depend on flexibilities to the IP regime and therefore India should refuse signing. Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) obligations like the "Digital 2 Dozen" which the US is actively proselytizing across the Pacific. If we make that mistake, we will make zero progress in indigenous security research and product development and also many other areas of our economy, health sector and education sector will be severely compromised. Therefore it would be best to keep IP rights expansion and enforcement out of the framework for the US-India Cyber Relationship.

The PIL seeking a ban on WhatsApp was refused by the SC recently. Encrypted messaging services like Telegram however, have been used in the past by terror groups. What's your take on such end-to-end encryption services?

Privacy and security are two sides of the same coin. You cannot have one without the other. End-to-end encryption is the basis for online privacy. End-to-end encryption is a pre-requisite for many legitimate actions of law abiding citizens online such as commerce, banking, tele-medicine, protection of intellectual property, witness/source protection, client confidentiality etc. Therefore, banning end-to-end encryption would mean the death of individual privacy and national security.

If the government wants to promote cyber security it should promote the use of end-to-end encryption amongst law abiding citizens.

Terrorist have to be stopped through targeted profiling, surveillance and interception. Big data analytics may be useful to watch for patterns in the meta data but there is no replacement for good old fashioned police work.

Once suspects have been identified the encrypted channels can be compromised by:

Placing trojans on the end-user devices
Performing man-in-the-middle attacks and
Using brute force attacks with super computers.

Snowden's revelations have made it very clear that blanket and mass surveillance does not help foil terror attacks or stop organised crime. So far, research and government reports from across the world indicate that only a minority of terrorists use encryption. However, this situation may change.

We don't have any proper encryption policy under the IT Act yet. What's taking so long and what are the key points that any policy in this matter must include in future?

We need many different types of encryption policies. We need a policy that mandates encryption and digital signature for all government personnel and also for all government transactions. We need policies that promote research and development in cryptography and mathematics. We need to update our criminal procedure code so that encrypted communications and data can be targeted by law enforcement and used effectively in the criminal justice process.

However, we should not have any broad encryption policy that tries to regulate encryption as a technology. That would be a highly regressive move and will be impossible to enforce. That would breed contempt for rule of law.

Surveillance and the tech around it has been contentious for various governments. Where do we stand vis-a-vis regulating surveillance measures by the state?

Our surveillance and interception laws are outdated. They need to be modernized to deal with advancements in technology and also global developments when it comes to data protection and privacy law.

In fact, our organisation was part of a global effort called Necessary and Proportionate which identified 13 principles to modernise surveillance which are connected to various aspects such as Legality, Legitimate aim, Competent judicial authority, Integrity of communications and systems and more. Some of these principles may have to be customised for the Indian context. [For example, given the load on courts perhaps India should stay with executive authorization of interceptions and data access requests. However, getting the law correct is only half the job. For the law cannot fix what the technology has broken. Some surveillance projects are well designed. For ex. the NATGRID - from what I understand it is a standard and platform that which will allow 12 security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies to temporarily make unions of sub-sets of 21 data sources. These automated temporary databases will be created under existing data access provisions of the law. I also hope the NATGRID is also using cryptography to ensure the maintenance of a non-repudiable log that will identify all officers involved in authorizing the each request and accessing the resultant data. Unfortunately, other surveillance projects are unmitigated disasters. For example, UID or Aadhaar. Many Indians don't realize that Aadhaar is a surveillance project. Biometrics is just a fancy name for remote, covert and non-consensual identification technology. Using the UID database the government can identify every single Indian without their consent. The so called "consent layer" in the India Stack is being developed by volunteers outside the UIDAI to avoid transparency under the Right to Information Act. Nothing in the current layer of the "consent layer" allows citizens to revoke consent. There is no facility in the UID Act to delete yourself from the database. Identity information aka the UID number and authentication information aka your biometrics for about a billion Indians have been collected and stored in a centralized location. It is as if our parliamentarians have written an open letter to criminals and foreign governments says "here is the information you need to wreck whole sale damage - come and get it". Hopefully the Supreme Court will save us from this impending disaster.]

With a sluggish US market, India has the biggest potential for companies like FB & Google, next only to China. Do you feel that in the quest to take over the Indian market, FB & Google are going to monopolise cyberspace in India?

I have news for you - they have already monopolised Indian cyberspace. They have completely wiped out competition in certain domains.

One of the many reasons they have done this is because we don't have laws and regulations to temper their hegemonic tendencies. For example, we could use data portability and interoperability mandates for social media to spark competition in markets where there are entrenched monopolies.

Competition law can be used to protect other firms from abuse of market power. Consumer protection law and privacy law could be used to ensure that user's rights are not compromised in the race for market share. In addition, a modern privacy law compliant with the best practices in the European Data Protection Regulation 2016, would allow emerging Indian companies to compete with giants like Facebook and Google on a level playing field. [Speaking of level playing field - only recently has the government introduced the "equalization levy". This was long overdue. Imagine the amount of tax that could have been collected so far and damage that has been done to competition. Regardless the current NDA government deserves our kudos for ensuring that Facebook and Google contribute their fair share of taxes. The new IPR Policy was also an opportunity to address the monopoly of Google and Facebook. There should have been a concerted attempt to use free/open source software, open standard and open content to bolster Indic language technologies. A billion dollars from every spectrum auction should be used to create incentives for Indian private sector, research and academic organisation who can contribute openly to the Indic cyberspace. This is the market where we can still build a highly competitive market. Today, given government inaction - millions of Indians are training Google's language platforms every time they use machine translation or speech to text technologies. This corpus of information will not be available for public interest research. Ideally we should also have Indians contributing to commons-based peer production projects like Wikipedia for their Indic language needs. Unfortunately the government totally missed this opportunity.]

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/catch-news-asad-ali-july-3-2016-fb-and-google-have-already-monopolised-indian-cyberspace

Facebook: A Platform with Little Less Sharing of Personal Information

nishant — 2016-06-05T02:38:22Z

As Facebook becomes less personal, what happens to digital friendship?

The article was published in the Indian Express on May 8, 2016.

Facebook is worried. Even though usage is growing, something strange is happening on the social network. For the first time since it started its journey as a website to rate datable people on college campuses, to becoming the global reference point that defined friendship in the connected age, people are sharing less personal information on Facebook. For a social media network that positions itself largely as a space where our everyday, banal doings become newsworthy articulations, this is surprising news. But it is true. On Facebook, the traffic is high, but most of it is now sharing of external information. People are sharing links to news, to listicles, to videos, to blogs entries, to pictures and to information that they find interesting, but they are writing less and less about what it is that they are doing and feeling.

Ironically, this coincides with the latest change in Facebook’s “response” options, where the ubiquitous “Like” button can now expand to other emojis where you can also be appropriately angry, sad, surprised, or happy about the shared content. Even as Facebook is trying to get its users to qualify how they feel and give emotional value to their likes, people seem to be sharing even less of their private lives on Facebook.

One of the key ways of understanding this drop in people sharing their personal information is through the concept of “context collapse”. It has been a concern since the first instances of disembodied digital communication. In our everyday life, we make sense of information based on the different contexts that surround us. The person who authors the information, the setting within which that information reaches us, the emotional state that we are in when encountering the information, our sense of where we are when processing it, and the preparedness we have for receiving this information are all crucial parameters by which we make sense of the meaning of the information and also our response to it.

In the case of Facebook, the context within which information and transactions have made sense is “friendship”. The site’s USP was that you could bring in a variety of information, but you were always sharing it with friends. You could have a large audience, but this audience is formed of people you know, people you trust, people you add to your friend groups — there is a sense of intimacy, privacy, and casualness that marks the flow of information. You are able to talk, in an equal breath, about what you had for breakfast, your crush on a celebrity, your random acts of charity, and your strong political rant, one after the other, without requiring to think about what you are posting and how others will receive it.

However, Facebook is not really a friendship platform. It is a company interested in selling our interactions and data to advertisers who can target us with content and information based on the patterns of our behaviour. To serve its advertisers better, Facebook started privileging “verified” information trying to ensure news and content producers higher attention and more eyeballs. This was further strengthened by their continued integration with third party vendors, who could push and pull information into the social world of Facebook, and is seen as one of the biggest reasons for this drop. Any newsfeed in the last few months has had equal amounts of professional and amateur content, leading to a context collapse, where you no longer feel like your Facebook feed is a private and intimate conversation with friends.

Similarly, Facebook’s expansive integration of its products —WhatsApp chats, Instagram updates, and Tumblr posts all can collapse into one — produced a confusing space where the personal information that you were once happy to share with your friends, is suddenly being shared along with news and information. Also, digital behaviour works on mirroring, and we often shape our updates to match what we see on our timelines. If we more and more see external content rather than personal statuses, we also start sharing more third party news and links, thus producing a domino effect of everybody shying away from extremely personal or intimate moments.

Facebook, for the millennials, has been the context within which friendship got structured. Its own transitions have now collapsed that context, leading people to think of it as a content aggregator. It is going to be interesting to see what happens to our digital friendships and networks if Facebook is no longer the space where they are housed.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/indian-express-nishant-shah-may-8-2016-facebook-a-platform-with-little-less-sharing-of-personal-information

Zuckerberg's Plan Spurned as India Backs Full Net Neutrality

praskrishna — 2016-02-15T02:18:54Z

Facebook Inc.’s plans for expansion in India have suffered a major setback.

The article by Adi Narayan and Bhuma Srivastava was published in Bloomberg on February 8, 2016. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.

Telecom regulator bans differential Internet data plans
Facebook had lobbied India to approve its Free Basics plan

After the company spent months lobbying the country to accept its Free Basics service -- a way of delivering a limited Internet that included Facebook, plus some other tools, for no cost -- India’s telecom regulator ruled against any plans from cellular operators that charge different rates to different parts of the Web.

Telecom operators can’t offer discriminatory tariffs for data services based on content, and aren’t allowed to enter into agreements with Internet companies to subsidize access to some websites, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India said in a statement Monday. Companies violating the rules will be fined, it said.

“This is the most extensive and stringent regulation on differential pricing anywhere in the world,” Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, said via phone. “Those who suggested regulation in place of complete ban have clearly lost.”

With this decision, India joins countries such as the U.S., Brazil and the Netherlands in passing laws that restrict telecom operators from discriminating Internet traffic based on content. It is a big blow to Facebook’s Internet sampler plan known as Free Basics, which is currently offered in about three dozen countries including Kenya and Zambia, none of which come close to the scale or reach that could’ve been achieved in India.

With 130 million Facebook users, 375 million people online, and an additional 800 million-plus who aren’t, India is the biggest growth market for the social network, which remains blocked in China.

Facebook said in a statement that it’s “disappointed with the outcome.”

Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said the decision won’t cause Facebook to give up on connecting people to the Internet in India, “because more than a billion people in India don’t have access to the Internet.” The company will continue to focus on its other initiatives, like extending networks using satellites, drones and lasers.

Freebies Curtailed

The rule will put an end to prepaid plans that offered free access to services such as Google searches, the WhatsApp messaging application and Facebook. These packages were popular with low-income users by giving them an incentive to get online, said Rajan Mathews, director general of the lobby group Cellular Operators Association of India.

“These types of plans were being used by operators to meet the policy goals of connecting one billion people,” Matthews said. “With these gone, the government needs to tell us what alternatives are there.”

The regulator’s decision comes after months of public lobbying by Facebook for India to approve Free Basics, which allows customers to access the social network and other services such as education, health care, and employment listings from their phones without a data plan.

Free Basics was criticized by activists who said it threatened net neutrality, the principle that all Internet websites should be equally accessible, and could change pricing in India for access to different websites.

The regulator, which had sought stakeholders’ views, said it was seeking to ensure data tariffs remain content agnostic. Operators will have six months to wind down existing differential pricing services.

Google Unaffected

“Anything on the Internet can’t be priced based on content, applications, source and destination,” R.S. Sharma, the regulator’s chairman, told reporters in New Delhi. Some Internet companies’ plans to offer free WiFi at public venues, like Google Inc.’s project with Indian Railways, are not affected by this ruling, he said.

For Free Basics, one or two carriers in a given country offer the package for free at slow speeds, betting that it will help attract new customers who’ll later upgrade to pricier data plans. In India, Facebook had tied up with Reliance Communications Ltd., though the service was suspended in December as the government solicited comments from proponents and opponents.

Since the government’s telecommunications regulator announced the suspension, Facebook bought daily full-page ads in major newspapers and plastered billboards with pictures of happy farmers and schoolchildren it says would benefit from Free Basics. Zuckerberg has frequently made the case himself via phone or newspaper op-eds, asking that Indians petition the government to approve his service.

Entrepreneurs, business people and activists took to Twitter to share their views after the decision came out on Monday.

“Great to see TRAI backing #NetNeutrality,” Kunal Bahl, founder of Snapdeal.com, one of India’s biggest e-commerce sites, said. “Let’s keep the Internet free and independent.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-adi-narayan-bhuma-srivastava-february-8-2016-zuckerberg-plan-spurned-as-india-backs-full-net-neutrality

Linking Facebook use to free top-up data

praskrishna — 2016-02-14T12:33:17Z

Just before the Trai notification, the Ambani brothers signed a spectrum sharing pact and they have been sharing optic fibre since 2013.

The article was published in the Deccan Chronicle on February 14, 2016. Pranesh Prakash gave inputs.

Some people argue that Trai should have stayed off the issue since the Competition Commission of India (CCI) is sufficient to tackle Net Neutrality harms. However it is unclear if predatory pricing by Reliance, which has only nine per cent market share, will cross the competition law threshold for market dominance? Interestingly, just before the Trai notification, the Ambani brothers signed a spectrum sharing pact and they have been sharing optic fibre since 2013.

Will a content sharing pact follow these carriage pacts? As media diversity researcher, Alam Srinivas, notes: “If their plans succeed, their media empires will span across genres such as print, broadcasting, radio and digital. They will own the distribution chains such as cable, direct-to-home (DTH), optic fibre (terrestrial and undersea), telecom towers and multiplexes.”

What does this convergence vision of the Ambani brothers mean for media diversity in India? In the absence of net neutrality regulation could they use their dominance in broadcast media to reduce choice on the Internet? Could they use a non-neutral provisioning of the Internet to increase their dominance in broadcast media? When a single wire or the very same radio spectrum delivers radio, TV, games and Internet to your home — what under competition law will be considered a substitutable product? What would be the relevant market?

At the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), we argue that competition law principles with lower threshold should be applied to networked infrastructure through infrastructure specific non-discrimination regulations like the one that Trai just notified to protect digital media diversity.

Was an absolute prohibition the best response for Trai? With only two possible exemptions — i.e. closed communication network and emergencies — the regulation is very clear and brief. However, as our colleague Pranesh Prakash has said, Trai has over-regulated and used a sledgehammer where a scalpel would have sufficed. In CIS’ official submission, we had recommended a series of tests in order to determine whether a particular type of zero rating should be allowed or forbidden. That test may be legally sophisticated; but as Trai argues it is clear and simple rules that result in regulatory equity. A possible alternative to a complicated multi-part legal test is the leaky walled garden proposal. Remember, it is only in the case of very dangerous technologies where the harms are large scale and irreversible and an absolute prohibition based on the precautionary principle is merited.

However, as far as network neutrality harms go, it may be sufficient to insist that for every MB that is consumed within Free Basics, Reliance be mandated to provide a data top up of 3MB.

This would have three advantages. One, it would be easy to articulate in a brief regulation and therefore reduce the possibility of litigation. Two, it is easy for the consumer who is harmed to monitor the mitigation measure and last, based on empirical data, the regulator could increase or decrease the proportion of the mitigation measure.

This is an example of what Prof Christopher T. Marsden calls positive, forward-looking network neutrality regulation. Positive in the sense that instead of prohibitions and punitive measures, the emphasis is on obligations and forward-looking in the sense that no new technology and business model should be prohibited.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/deccan-chronicle-february-14-2016-linking-facebook-use-to-free-top-up-data

There is No Such Thing as Free Basics

subha — 2016-02-14T11:37:50Z

India would not see the rain of Free Basics advertisements on billboards with images of farmers and common people explaining how much they could benefit from this Firefox project. Because the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has taken a historical step by banning the differential pricing without discriminating services.

The article was published in Bangalore Mirror on February 9, 2016.

In their notes, TRAI has explained, "In India, given that a majority of the population are yet to be connected to the Internet, allowing service providers to define the nature of access would be equivalent of letting TSPs shape the users' Internet experience." Not just that, violation of this ban would cost Rs 50,000 every day.

Facebook's earlier plan was to launch Free Basics in India by making a few websites—that are mostly partners with Facebook—available for free. The company not just advertised heavily on billboards and commercials across the nation, it also embedded a campaign inside Facebook asking users to vote in support of Free Basics.

TRAI criticised Facebook's attempt for such a manipulative public provocation. However, Facebook was heavily criticised by many policy and Internet advocates, including non-profits groups like Free Software Movement of India and Savetheinternet.in campaign.

The latter two collectives were strongly discouraging Free Basics by bringing public opinion wherein Savetheinternet.org was used to send over 10 lakh emails to TRAI to disallow Free Basics.

Furthermore 500 start ups including major ones like Cleartrip, Zomato, Practo, Paytm and Cleartax also wrote to prime minister Narendra Modi requesting continued support for Net Neutrality — a concept that advocates equal treating of websites — on the Republic Day.

Stand-up comedy groups like AIB and East India Comedy had created humorous but informative videos explaining the regulatory debate and supporting net neutrality which went viral.

Technology critic and Quartz writer Alice Truong reacted saying: "Zuckerberg almost portrays net neutrality as a first-world problem that doesn't apply to India because having some service is better than no service."

In the light of differential pricing, news portal Medianama's founder Nikhil Pawa, in his opinion piece in Times of India, emphasised the way Aircel in India, Grameenphone in Bangladesh and Orange in Africa were providing free access to Internet with a sole motif of access to Internet, and criticised the walled Internet of Facebook that confines users inside Facebook only.

Had the differential pricing been allowed, it would have affected start ups and content-based smaller companies adversely, as they could never have managed to pay the high price to a partner service provider to make their service available for free.

On the other hand, tech-giants like Facebook could have easily managed to capture the entire market. Since the inception of the Facebook-run non-profit Internet.org has run into a lot of controversies because of the hidden motive behind the claimed support for social cause.

The decision by the government has been welcomed largely in the country and outside.

In support of the move, Web We Want programme manager at the World Wide Web Foundation, Renata Avila, has shared saying,

"As the country with the second largest number of Internet users worldwide, this decision will resonate around the world.

"It follows a precedent set by Chile, the United States, and others which have adopted similar net neutrality safeguards. The message is clear: We can't create a two-tier Internet — one for the haves, and one for the have-nots. We must connect everyone to the full potential of the open Web."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/bangalore-mirror-subhashish-panigrahi-february-9-2016-there-is-no-such-thing-as-free-basics

India Sets Strict New Net Neutrality Rules

praskrishna — 2016-02-11T01:53:19Z

In India, advocates of net neutrality have welcomed new rules by the telecom regulator that have blocked efforts by Facebook to offer free but limited access to the web in the country’s fast growing Internet market.

The article by Anjana Pasricha was published in Voice of America on February 9, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

In a widely awaited ruling, the Telecom Regulator Authority of India (TRAI) said on Monday that “no service provider shall charge differential pricing on the basis of application, platforms or websites or sources." It will impose penalties of $735 a day if the regulations are broken.

Kiran Jonnalagadda, who was among a group of 10 that launched an impassioned campaign called Save the Internet, says they have won a “fabulous” victory against large corporations to ensure equal web access for millions.

“We were up against the most powerful companies in the world, we had no chance of fighting Airtel last year, we had no chance of fighting Facebook. I think the only reason it worked is that we were on the side of facts, the opposition was not,” says Jonnalagadda.

Debate on Airtel

The campaign on net neutrality snowballed into a nationwide public debate after an Indian telecom company, Airtel, launched a marketing platform last April on which it planned to offer customers access with no data charges to certain Internet services and sites.

In recent weeks, the focus turned to “Free Basics”, a service being offered by Facebook on mobile phones to a handful of sites in areas such as communication, healthcare, and education.

Saying it wanted to vastly expand Internet access in poor, rural areas, Facebook had launched a massive advertising campaign in support of the platform. Only about 300 million in the country of 1.2 billion people have access to the net, many just through mobile devices.

But campaigners slammed Free Basics as “poor Internet for poor people” and said it would create a “walled garden” in which Facebook would control the content it offered users. Leading Indian technology entrepreneurs and university professors also called on the government to guard against attempts by Internet giants to turn the country into a “digital colony.”

Many of them have applauded the regulator’s move to strengthen net neutrality.

Ban on differential pricing

However, some are raising questions about the the complete ban on differential pricing announced by the regulator. That includes the Bangalore-based Center for Internet and Society research group, which says India has put in place the most stringent net neutrality regulations across the world. Its executive director, Sunil Abraham, says TRAI cited the examples of the Netherlands and Chile, but the ban on differential pricing in those countries is not as absolute as the one notified in India.

“We think that if proper technological safeguards and other market safeguards are put in place, it would be possible to have both — to have rapid growth in Internet access and reduced harm that emerge[s] from network neutrality violations,” says Abraham.

Indeed, the last word may not have been said on net neutrality in India as big telecom operators are expected to mount legal challenges to the regulator’s ruling in the coming months.

Expressing disappointment with India’s ruling, the Cellular Operators Association of India has called the ban on differential pricing a “welfare reducing measure” that could block an avenue for “less advantaged citizens to move to increased economic growth and prosperity by harnessing the power of the Internet.”

In a statement, Facebook has said “we will continue our efforts to eliminate barriers and give the unconnected an easier path to the Internet.”

But after having tasted victory, the volunteers at Save the Internet, who have grown from about 10 to 100 in the last year, have already set their sights on another aspect of net neutrality besides differential pricing.

“The campaign is not going to retire because this is not the end of it. There is also discrimination on the basis of speed, which the regulator has not taken up yet,” says Jonnalagadda.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/voice-of-america-anjana-pasricha-february-9-2016-india-sets-strict-new-net-neutrality-rules

India bans Facebook’s ‘free’ Internet for the poor

praskrishna — 2016-02-10T02:53:49Z

India’s telecom regulator said Monday that service providers cannot charge discriminatory prices for Internet services, a blow to Facebook’s global effort to provide low-cost Internet to developing countries.

The article by Annie Gowen was published in Washington Post on February 8, 2016. Sunil Abraham gave inputs. The article was also mirrored by NDTV.

Facebook’s “Free Basics” program provides a pared-down version of Facebook and weather and job listings to some 15 million mobile-phone users in 37 countries around the world.

When it debuted in India in April, however, Free Basics immediately ran afoul of Internet activists who said it violated the principle of “net neutrality,” which holds that consumers should be able to access the entire Internet unfettered by price or speed.

On Monday, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India agreed, prohibiting data service providers from offering or charging different prices for data — even if it’s free. The Free Basics program has run into trouble elsewhere in the world recently — with Egypt banning it and Google clarifying that it pulled out of the application during a testing phase in Zambia.

In a statement, Facebook said that while the company was “disappointed with the outcome, we will continue our efforts to eliminate barriers and give the unconnected an easier path to the Internet.”

In an interview before the ruling, Chris Daniels, Facebook’s vice president for Internet.org — the umbrella organization of the global effort — said India’s negative reaction has been “unique versus other markets we’ve seen. We’ve been welcomed with open arms in many countries.”

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg launched the program to great fanfare in 2013, partnering with other international tech firms on a mission to connect the 4 billion people in the world without Internet access — which he says is a basic human right.

India has 300 million mobile Internet users but still has close to 1 billion people without proper Internet access. But it is second only to the United States in number of Facebook users, with 130 million, with vast expansion potential as Facebook works to increase its user base beyond the developed world.

Yet the Free Basics program was controversial from the start in India, where critics accused Facebook of creating a “walled garden” for poor users that allowed them access to only a portion of the web that Facebook controlled.

Dozens of well-known tech entrepreneurs, university professors and tech industry groups spoke out against it, saying that the curated app, with its handpicked weather, job and other listings, put India’s scrappy start-ups and software developers at a disadvantage.

On Monday, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the founder and creator of India’s payment application PayTM, applauded the regulator’s move.

He had been among the program’s fiercest critics, dubbing Free Basics “poor Internet for poor people” and comparing Facebook’s actions to that of British colonialists and their East India Co.

“India, Do u buy into this baby internet?” Sharma tweeted in December. “The East India company came with similar ‘charity’ to Indians a few years back!”

“In a country like India that’s just taking off, it’s important that there is an equal playground for every app developer,” he said in an interview.

In December, India’s regulator put out a position paper on differential pricing and asked for public comment on whether such programs were fair.

In response, Facebook launched a public relations blitz, with television and newspaper advertisements, billboards and an opinion piece by Zuckerberg in the Times of India in which he argued against criticism that the social-media giant was providing the service simply to expand its user base.

Facebook also engineered a prompt to users that sent “robo” letters of support for Free Basics to India’s telecommunications regulator. The regulator, flooded with form letters, was not amused.

Facebook’s behavior may not have helped its cause, some analysts said.

“Facebook went overboard with its propaganda [and] convinced ‘the powers that be’ that it cannot be trusted with mature stewardship of our information society,” said Sunil Abraham of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore.

Yet David Kirkpatrick, the author of “The Facebook Effect,” says that Zuckerberg is determined to see the program succeed.

“Facebook is relentless,” he said. “Zuckerberg has said from the beginning his goal is to make the world more open and connected. And that’s a phrase he continues to repeat 10 years later.”

The regulator had asked Facebook, and its local telecom partner, Reliance Communications, to suspend Free Basics’ operations during the public comment period. But the social-media giant and its partner appeared to flout the suspension order, with the program continuing to be operational on Reliance SIM cards.

A spokesman for Reliance earlier said that the applications was in “testing mode” and that it was not commercially promoting the product.

The regulatory body said Monday that anybody violating the order in the future will be subject to a fine of about $735 a day. It will return to review the policy in two years to see if it is effective.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/washington-post-annie-gowen-february-8-2016-india-bans-facebooks-free-internet-for-the-poor

India, Egypt say no thanks to free Internet from Facebook

praskrishna — 2016-02-03T01:49:25Z

ALWAR, India — Connecting people to the Internet is not easy in this impoverished farming district of wheat and millet fields, where working camels can be glimpsed along roads that curve through the low-slung Aravalli Hills.

The article by Annie Gowen was published in Washington Post on January 28, 2016. Sunil Abraham gave inputs.

So when Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg helicoptered in about a year ago to visit a small computer lab and tout Internet for all, Osama Manzar, director of India’s Digital Empowerment Foundation, was thrilled.

But when Manzar tried Facebook’s limited free Internet service, he was bitterly disappointed. The app, called Free Basics, is a pared-down version of Facebook with other services such as weather reports and job listings.

“I feel betrayed — not only betrayed but upset and angry,” Manzar said. “He said we’re going to solve the problem with access and bandwidth. But Facebook is not the Internet.”

Zuckerberg launched his sweeping Internet.org initiative in 2013 as a way to provide 4 billion people in the developing world with Web access, which he says he sees as a basic human right.

But the initiative has hit a major snag in India, where in recent months Free Basics has been embroiled in controversy — with critics saying that the app, which provides limited access to the Web, does a disservice to the poor and violates the principles of “net neutrality,” which holds that equal access to the Internet should be unfettered to all.

Activist groups such as Save the Internet, professors from leading universities and tech titans such as Nandan Nilekani, the co-founder of Infosys, have spoken out against it. Another well-known Indian entrepreneur dubbed it “poor Internet for poor people.”

The debate escalated in recent weeks after India’s telecommunications regulator suspended Free Basics as it weighs whether such plans are fair, with new rules expected by the end of the month.

A week later, Free Basics was banned in Egypt with little explanation, prompting concern that the backlash could spread to other markets. More recently, Google pulled out of the app in Zambia after a trial period. An estimated 15 million people are using Free Basics in 37 countries, including 1 million in India.

[India’s Modi wants to woo Silicon Valley, but privacy fears grow at home]

“It’s a very important test case for what will be India’s network neutrality regime,” said Sunil Abraham of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore.

India’s debate could affect the way other countries address the question of whether it is fair for Internet service providers to price websites differently. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s rules on net neutrality went into effect only in June.

Officials at Facebook launched an advertising blitz to counteract the negative publicity. “Who could possibly be against this?” Zuckerberg wondered in a Times of India editorial on Dec. 28.

“I think we’ve been a bit surprised by the strong reaction,” said Chris Daniels, Facebook’s vice president for Internet.org. “Fundamentally, the reason for the surprise is that the program is doing good. It’s bringing people online who are moving onto the broader Internet.”

India, a country of 1.2 billion, has the second-highest number of Internet users in the world, but an estimated 80 percent of the population does not have Internet access.

India’s tech-savvy prime minister, Narendra Modi, is trying to combat this with an ambitious “Digital India” plan to link 250,000 village centers with fiber-optic cable and extend mobile coverage. He has turned to the Indian tech community as well as Silicon Valley for help, securing an agreement with Google to provide free WiFi in railway stations.

India has 130 million Facebook users, second only to the United States, and is a key market as the social-media giant looks to expand beyond the developed world, where its growth has slowed.

“If Facebook manages to get another half a billion users in India, that’s a valuable set of eyeballs to sell to a political party or corporation,” Abraham said.

[Is India the next frontier for Facebook?]

Facebook has long said that its program is about altruism, not eyeballs.

But it does reap new customers. Those who buy a SIM card from Facebook’s local mobile partner, Reliance Communications, are then prompted to pay for additional data. About 40 percent who sign up for Free Basics buy a data plan to move to the wider Web after 30 days, Daniels said.

The service is still running despite the India suspension. A Reliance spokesman said it is in “testing mode” and is not being promoted.

“The thing people forget about Free Basics is that it’s intended to be a temporary transition for people to give them a taste of the Internet and sign up. It’s a marketing program for the carrier in some sense,” said David Kirkpatrick, author of “The Facebook Effect.” But he added: “The idea that it’s some kind of alternative Internet that’s a discriminatory gesture to the poor is the prevailing view among the Indian intelligentsia. It’s fundamentally misunderstood.”

Facebook has pledged to open up to new scrutiny the selection process for companies with new applications, Daniels said. That is a response to concerns by many in India’s tech community that Facebook’s process put India’s fledgling start-ups at a disadvantage.

The project’s proponents say that India’s needs are so great it cannot afford to suspend one program that could help.

Mahesh Uppal, a telecommunications consultant, notes that more than 10 percent of the country does not have mobile phone coverage and that India’s progress in extending fiber-optic cable to village centers is proceeding at a glacial pace. Modi had set a goal of linking all 250,000 by 2016, but only 27,000 have cable so far and it is ready for use in only 3,200, according to a government report.

In comparison, some 80 percent of China’s villages are linked by broadband.

[Inside the Indian temple that draws America’s tech titans]

In Alwar district in the northern state of Rajasthan, many remember when Zuckerberg came to visit but fewer know about Free Basics.

“I’ve heard it’s free and by Facebook and you don’t have to pay for it,” said Umer Farukh, 43, a folk musician. “But I don’t think Facebook should control it. The Internet should be for everybody.”

Farukh has only been computer literate for two years, but he’s already emailing and using YouTube to post videos and promote his band.

He’s become such a proponent that he has donated space for one of Manzar’s computer centers — part of a government initiative to build cyber-hubs in minority communities — and encouraged the female members of his family to take classes, which is rare in his conservative community.

Farukh says that challenges to connecting India go far beyond data plans and fiber-optic cable or the government broadband that often sputters out. Wages are low, and hours are long. Only about half of the women in his state are literate, and about a quarter of the young women in his neighborhood are kept at home and not educated.

“This place is very backward,” he said. “India as a society is lagging far behind in terms of Internet.”

In the small nearby community of Roja Ka Baas, ringed by fields of blooming mustard greens, residents are still awaiting the opening of their planned WiFi center. They are struggling along on cheap mobile phones with slow 2G spectrum until then, they said.

Sakir Khan, 14, said that once the Internet finally arrived in this village, the first thing he would do would be to sign up for Facebook.

Farheen Fatima and Subuhi Parvez contributed to this report.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/washington-post-annie-gowen-january-28-2016-india-egypt-say-no-thanks-to-free-internet-from-facebook

Facebook is no charity, and the ‘free’ in Free Basics comes at a price

praskrishna — 2016-01-30T11:32:47Z

Who could possibly be against free internet access? This is the question that Mark Zuckerberg asks in a piece for the Times of India in which he claims Facebook’s Free Basics service “protects net neutrality”.

Free Basics is the rebranded Internet.org, a Facebook operation where by partnering with local telecoms firms in the developing world the firm offers free internet access – limited only to Facebook, Facebook-owned WhatsApp, and a few other carefully selected sites and services.

Zuckerberg was responding to the strong backlash that Free Basics has faced in India, where the country’s Telecom Regulatory Authority recently pulled the plug on the operation while it debates whether telecoms operators should be allowed to offer different services with variable pricing, or whether a principle of network neutrality should be enforced.

Not content to await the regulator’s verdict, Facebook has come out swinging. It has paid for billboards, full-page newspaper ads and television ad campaigns to try to enforce the point that Free Basics is good for India’s poor. In his Times piece, Zuckerberg goes one step further – implying that those opposing Free Basics are actually hurting the poor.

He argued that “for every ten people connected to the internet, roughly one is lifted out of poverty”. Without reference to supporting research, he instead offers an anecdote about a farmer called Ganesh from Maharashtra state. Ganesh apparently used Free Basics to double his crop yields and get a better deal for his crops.

Zuckerberg stressed that “critics of free basic internet services should remember that everything we’re doing is about serving people like Ganesh. This isn’t about Facebook’s commercial interests”.

Zuckerberg’s indignation illustrates either how little he understands about the internet, or that he’s willing to say anything to anyone listening.

This is not a charity

First, despite his claims to the contrary Free Basics clearly runs against the idea of net neutrality by offering access to some sites and not others. While the service is claimed to be open to any app, site or service, in practice the submission guidelines forbid JavaScript, video, large images, and Flash, and effectively rule out secure connections using HTTPS. This means that Free Basics is able to read all data passing through the platform. The same rules don’t apply to Facebook itself, ensuring that it can be the only social network, and (Facebook-owned) WhatsApp the only messaging service, provided.

Yes, Free Basics is free. But how appealing is a taxi company that will only take you to certain destinations, or an electricity provider that will only power certain home electrical devices? There are alternative models: in Bangladesh, Grameenphone gives users free data after they watch an advert. In some African countries, users get free data after buying a handset.

Second, there is no convincing body of peer-reviewed evidence to suggest internet access lifts the world’s poor out of poverty. Should we really base telecommunications policy on an anecdote and a self-serving industry report sponsored by the firm that stands to benefit? India has a literacy rate of 74%, of which a much smaller proportion speak English well enough to read it. Literate English speakers and readers tend not to be India’s poorest citizens, yet it’s English that is the predominant language on the web. This suggests Free Basics isn’t suited for India’s poorest, who’d be better served by more voice and video services.

Third, the claim that Free Basics isn’t in Facebook’s commercial interest is the most outrageous. In much the same way that Nestlé offered free baby formula in the 1970s as development assistance to low-income countries – leaving nursing mothers unable to produce sufficient milk themselves – Free Basics is likely to impede commercial alternatives.

By offering free access Free Basics disrupts the market, allowing Facebook to gain a monopoly that can benefit from the network effects of a growing user base. Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, in India, has aptly noted that expanding audience and consumer bases have long been as important as revenues for internet firms. Against Facebook’s immensely deep pockets and established user-base, homegrown competitors are thwarted before they even begin.

Poverty consists of more than just no internet

India will not always have low levels of internet access, this is not the issue – in fact Indian internet penetration growth rates are relatively high. Instead the company sees Free Basics as a means to establish a bridgehead into the country, establishing a monopoly before other firms move in.

There is decades of research about how best to help farmers like Ganesh: access to good quality education, healthcare, and water all could go a long way. But even if we see internet access as one of the key needs to be met, why would we then offer a restricted version?

In presenting Free Basics as an act of altruism Zuckerberg tries to silence criticism. “Who could possibly be against this?”, he asks:

What reason is there for denying people free access to vital services for communication, education, healthcare, employment, farming and women’s rights?

That is the right question, but Free Basics is the wrong answer. Let’s call a spade a spade and see Free Basics as an important part of the business strategy of one of the world’s largest internet corporations, rather than as a selfless act of charity.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-conversation-january-11-2016-facebook-is-no-charity

Facebook Shares 10 Key Facts about Free Basics. Here's What's Wrong with All 10 of Them.

sunil — 2015-12-25T14:59:10Z

Shweta Sengar of Catch News spoke to Sunil Abraham about the recent advertisement by Facebook titled "What Net Neutrality Activists won't Tell You or, the Top 10 Facts about Free Basics". Sunil argued against the validity of all the 'top 10 facts'.

Facebook has rebranded internet.org as Free Basics. After suffering from several harsh blows from the net neutrality activists in India, the social media behemoth is positioning a movement in order to capture user attention.

Apart from a mammoth two page advertisement on Free Basics on 23 December in a leading English daily, we spotted a numerous hoardings across the capital.

Unlike Facebook, Wikipedia has a rather upfront approach for raising funds. You must have noticed a pop-up as you open Wikipedia when they are in need of funds. What Facebook has done is branded Free Basics as 'free' as the basic needs of life.

The newspaper advertisement by Facebook was aimed at clearing all the doubts about Free Basics. The 10 facts highlighted a connected India and urging users to take the "first step towards digital equality."

In an interview with Catch, Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of Bangalore based research organisation, the Centre for Internet and Society, shared his thoughts on the controversial subject. Abraham countered each of Facebook's ten arguments. Take a look:

01 Free basics is open to any carriers. Any mobile operator can join us in connecting India.

Sunil Abraham: Free Basics was initially exclusive to only one telecom operator in most markets that it was available in.

The non-exclusivity was introduced only after activists in India complained. But now the arrangement is exclusive to Free Basics as a walled garden provider. But discrimination harms remain until other Internet services can also have what Facebook has from telecom operators ie. free access to their destinations.

02 We do not charge anyone anything for Free Basics. Period.

SA: As Bruce Schneier says "surveillance is the business model of the Internet". Free basics users are subject to an additional layer of surveillance ie. the data retention by the Facebook proxy server. Just as Facebook cannot say that they are ignoring Data Protection law because Facebook is a free product - they cannot say that Free Basics can violate network neutrality law because it is a free service. For ex. Flipkart should get Flipkart Basic on all Indian ISPs and Telcos.

03 We do not pay for the data consumed in Free Basics. Operators participate because the program has proven to bring more people online. Free Basics has brought new people onto mobile networks on average over 50% faster since launching the service.

SA: Facebook has been quoting statistics as evidence to influence the policy formulation process. But we need the absolute numbers and we also need them to be independently verifiable. At the very least we need the means to cross verify these numbers with numbers that telcos and ISPs routinely submit to TRAI.

Theoretical harms must be addressed through net neutrality regulation. For example, you don't have to build a single, centralised database of all Indian citizens to know that it can be compromised - from a security design perspective centralisation is always a bad idea. Gatekeeping powers given to any powerful entity will be compromised. While evidence is useful, regulation can already begin based on well established regulatory principles. After scientific evidence has been made available - the regulation can be tweaked.

04 Any developer or publisher can have their content on Free Basics. There are clear technical specs openly published here ... and we have never rejected an app or publisher who has me these tech specs.

SA: Again this was only done as a retrospective fix after network neutrality activists in India complained about exclusive arrangements. For example, the music streaming service Hungama is not a low-bandwidth destination but since it was included the technical specifications only mentions large images and video files. Many of the other sites are indistinguishable from their web equivalents clearly indicating that this was just an afterthought. At the moment Free Basics has become controversial so most developers and publishers are not approaching them so there is no way for us to verify Facebook's claim.

05 Nearly 800 developers in India have signed their support for Free Basics.

SA: I guess these are software developers working in the services industry who don't see themselves as potential competition to Facebook or any of the services within Free Basics. Also since Facebook as been completely disingenuous when it comes to soliciting support for their campaigns it is very hard to believe these claims. It has tried to change the meaning of the phrase "net neutrality" and has framed the debate in an inaccurate manner - therefore I could quite confidently say that these developers must have been fooled into supporting Free Basics.

06 It is not a walled garden: In India, 40% of people who come online through Free Basics are paying for data and accessing the full internet within the first 30 days. In the same time period, 8 times more people are paying versus staying on just

SA: Again, no absolute numbers and also no granularity in the data that makes it impossible for anyone to verify these numbers. Also there is no way to compare these numbers to access options that are respectful of network neutrality such as equal rating. If the numbers are roughly the same for equal rating and zero-rating then there is no strong case to be made for zero-rating.

07 Free Basics is growing and popular in 36 other countries, which have welcomed the program with open arms and seen the enormous benefits it has brought.

SA: Free Basics was one of the most controversial topics at the last Internet Governance Forum. A gratis service is definitely going to be popular but that does not mean forbearance is the only option for the regulator. In countries with strong civil society and/or a strong regulator, Free Basics has ran into trouble. Facebook has been able to launch Free Basics only in jurisdictions where regulators are still undecided about net neutrality. India and Brazil are the last battle grounds for net neutrality and that is why Facebook is spending advertising dollar and using it's infrastructure to win the global south.

08 In a recent representative poll, 86% of Indians supported Free Basics by Facebook, and the idea that everyone deserves access to free basic internet services.

SA: This is the poll which was framed in alarmist language where Indian were asked to choose between perpetuating or bridging the digital divide. This is a false choice that Facebook is perpetuating - with forward-looking positive Network Neutrality rules as advocated by Dr. Chris Marsden it should be possible to bridge digital divide without incurring any free speech, competition, innovation and diversity harms.

09 In the past several days, 3.2 million people have petitioned the TRAI in support of Free Basics.

SA: Obviously - since Free Basics is better than nothing. But the real choice should have been - are you a) against network neutrality ie. would you like to see Facebook play gatekeeper on the Internet OR b) for network neutrality ie. would you like to see Free Basics forced to comply with network neutrality rules and expand access without harms to consumers and innovators.

10 There are no ads in the version of Facebook on Free Basics. Facebook produces no revenue. We are doing this to connect India, and the benefits to do are clear.

SA: As someone who has watched the Internet economy since the first dot com boom - it is absolutely clear that consumer acquisition is as important as revenues. They are doing it to connect people to Facebook and as a result some people will also connect to the Internet. But India is the last market on the planet where the walled garden can be bigger than the Internet, and therefore Facebook is manipulating the discourse through it's dominance of the networked public sphere.

Bravo to TRAI and network neutrality activists for taking Facebook on.

Originally published by Catch News, on December 24, 2015.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/facebook-shares-10-key-facts-about-free-basics-heres-whats-wrong-with-all-10-of-them