Centre for Internet and Society

Analyzing the Latest List of Blocked URLs by Department of Telecommunications (IIPM Edition)

snehashish — 2013-02-17T07:35:25Z

The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) in its order dated February 14, 2013 has issued directions to the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block seventy eight URLs. The block order has been issued as a result of a court order. Snehashish Ghosh does a preliminary analysis of the list of websites blocked as per the DoT order.

Medianama has published the DoT order, dated February 14, 2013, on its website.

What has been blocked?

The block order contains seventy eight URLs. Seventy three URLs are related to the Indian Institute of Planning and Management (IIPM). The other five URLs contain the term “highcourt”. The order also contains links from reputed news websites and news blogs including The Indian Express, Firstpost, Outlook, Times of India, Economic Times, Kafila and Caravan Magazine, and satire news websites Faking News and Unreal Times. The order also directs blocking of a public notice issued by the University Grants Commission (UGC).

The block order does not contain links to any social media website. However, some content related to IIPM has been removed but it finds no mention in the block order. Pursuant to which order or direction such content has been removed remains unclear. For example, Google has removed search results for the terms <Fake IIPM> pursuant to Court orders and it carries the following notice:

"In response to a legal request submitted to Google, we have removed 1 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read more about the request at ChillingEffects.org."

Are there any mistakes in the order?

The direction issued by the DoT is once again inaccurate and mired with errors. In effect, the DoT has blocked sixty one unique URLs and the block order contains numerous repetitions. By its order the DoT has directed the ISPs to block an entire blog [http://iipmexposed.blogspot.in] along with URLs to various posts in the same blog.

Reasons for Blocking Websites

According to news reports, the main reason for blocking of websites by the DoT is a Court order issued by a Court in Gwalior. The reason for issuing such a block order might have been a court proceeding with respect to defamation and removal of defamatory content thereof. However, the reasons for blocking of domain names containing the term ‘high court’, which is not at all related to the IIPM Court case is unclear. The DoT by its order has also blocked a link in the website of a internet domain registrar which carried advertisement for the domain name [www.highcourt.com].

Are the blocks legitimate?

The block order may have been issued by the DoT under Rule 10 of the Information Technology (Procedure and Safeguards for Blocking for Access of Information by Public) Rules, 2009.

The Court order seems to be an interim injunction in a defamation suit. Generally, Courts exercise utmost caution while granting interim injunction in defamation cases. According to the Bonnard Rule (Bonnard v. Perryman, [1891] 2 Ch 269) in a defamation case, “interim injunction should not be awarded unless a defence of justification by the defendant was certain to fail at trial level.” Moreover, in the case of Woodward and Frasier, Lord Denning noted “that it would be unjust to fetter the freedom of expression, when actually a full trial had not taken place, and that if during trial it is proved that the defendant had defamed the plaintiff, then should they be liable to pay the damages.” The Delhi High Court in Tata Sons Ltd. v. Green Peace International followed the Bonnard Rule and the Lord Denning’s judgements and ruled against the award of interim injunction for removal of defamatory content and stated:

“The Court notes that the rule in Bonnard is as applicable in regulating grant of injunctions in claims against defamation, as it was when the judgment was rendered more than a century ago. This is because the Courts, the world over, have set a great value to free speech and its salutary catalyzing effect on public debate and discussion on issues that concern people at large. The issue, which the defendant’s game seeks to address, is also one of public concern. The Court cannot also sit in value judgment over the medium (of expression) chosen by the defendant since in a democracy, speech can include forms such as caricature, lampoon, mime parody and other manifestations of wit.”

Therefore, it appears that the Court order has moved away from the settled principles of law while awarding an interim injunction for blocking of content related to IIPM. It is also interesting to note that in Green Peace International, the Court also answered the question as to whether there should be different standard for posting or publication of defamatory content on the internet. It was observed by the Court that publication is a comprehensive term, ‘embracing all forms and medium – including the Internet’.

Blocking a Public Notice issued by a Statutory Body of Government of India

The block order mentions a URL which contains a public notice issued by University Grants Commission (UGC) related to the derecognition of IIPM as a University. The blocking of a public notice issued by the statutory body of the Government of India is unprecedented. A public notice issued by a statutory body is a function of the State. It can only be blocked or removed by a writ order issued by the High Court or the Supreme Court and only if it offends the Constitution. However, so far, ISPs such as BSNL have not enforced the blocking of this URL.

Implementation of the order by the ISPs

As pointed out in my previous blog post on blocking of websites, the ISPs have again failed to notify their consumers the reasons for the blocking of the URLs. This lack of transparency in the implementation of the block order has a chilling effect on freedom of speech.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/analyzing-latest-list-of-blocked-urls-by-dot

Hate speech: ban or ignore?

praskrishna — 2013-02-13T09:40:37Z

The Social Network discusses the hate speeches: whether they should be banned or ignored. Why does the state take action against some and not against some others. This on a day when Togadia and Owaisi were simultaneously trending on the social media.

This discussion was aired on NDTV on February 5, 2013

Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director, Centre for Internet and Society, and Shivam Vij of Kafila.com joined NDTV in the studio while actor and standup comic Sanjay Rajoura joined via webcam.

Pranesh said that the talk of banning these videos is foolish. He added, I don't think that is a solution. But the issue is one of criminal prosecution – whether that should happen or not, and with regard to the interesting dichotomy that Shivam pointed out some people are calling for somethings to be banned but not others. I think that kind of hypocrisy should be pointed out. I am happy that these small incidents of hate mongering are actually being blown out of proportion on social media because it actually gets people to react...to say wait a second...that is not right I might have a certain leanings towards Hindutva but that kind of speech is not what I support, or I might have a certain leanings towards what is called "pseudo-secularism" but that kind of speech is not what I support. So getting out that discussion out is important.

If we were on one hand a society where we had communal peace and then social media were focusing on these small kinds of incidents and blowing it out of proportion then that would be a problem.

Watch the full discussion aired on NDTV

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/ndtv-video-the-social-network-feb-5-2013-hate-speech-ban-or-ignore

Anonymous joins protests against Internet shutdown in Kashmir

praskrishna — 2013-03-01T04:46:06Z

Hacktivist group Anonymous joined thousands of others to protest the shutdown of internet services in Kashmir for the fourth consecutive day by authorities after the hanging of Afzal Guru, a key accused in the Parliament attack case.

Indu Nandakumar's article was published in the Economic Times on February 12, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Anonymous, which shot to fame in India after it brought down the websites of the Supreme Court and Congress Party last year, on Tuesday expressed its support to the people of Kashmir until the ban on internet and media services are lifted.

"We stand with # Kashmiras it comes to the end of its 3rd day under curfew. The comms blockade will fall. We are with you. # KashmirNow," a message posted on one of the Twitter accounts of Anonymous read.

Another Twitter account of the same group said, "#OpKashmir - Lift the media and internet blackout in #Kashmir".

Mobile internet services were suspended across Kashmir Valley on Saturday after the hanging of Afzal Guru in New Delhi. Online protests gathered steam by evening and thousands took to Twitter to express their anger censorships and blockades.

A senior official from the Department of Telecom, which had last year ordered the blocking of several Twitter accounts and websites, said internet services were blocked to avoid any further escalation of violence in Kashmir. But internet experts said a ban of communication services do not result in peace, instead it curtails the basic right of citizens to exchange messages.

"Government can ban certain class of messages and certain class of users, but definitely not a blanket ban of all services," said Sunil Abraham, executive director of Bangalore-based research organisation, the Centre for Internet and Society.

Essential commodities such as medicines, newspapers etc too are in short supply in Kashmir, where three people died and over 50 were injured in clashes since Saturday.

Anonymous has also been posting photographs from the region. One of the Twitter accounts of the group, @ anon_warlockon Tuesday tweeted, "A gag has been put on everything, information at best is trickling down".

Last year, Anonymous, known for its use of Guy Fawkes masks, had organised rallies across Indian cities to protest internet censorship after India's Department of Telecom blocked over 250 websites and 30 Twitter accounts for posting communal images and videos that led to people from Northeast exit Bangalore and a few other Indian cities.

"Internet service providers in the Valley were asked by officials in the Ministry of Home Affairs to switch off connectivity on Saturday morning. There has been no further communication from the Ministry until now and we don't expect any withdrawal in the next few days," a senior industry executive with direct knowledge of the matter told ET. He added that any decision on withdrawal of the ban will be taken only after the MHA and intelligence officials take stock of the situation.

Centre of Internet's Abraham said he was not sure if messages on social media were being taken seriously by the government. "Research shows that during the times of public disruption, ban of communication services will only make things worse. Enlightened governments should know this and act accordingly."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/economic-times-feb-12-2013-indu-nandakumar-anonymous-joins-protests-against-internet-shutdown-in-kashmir

Indian net service providers too play censorship tricks

praskrishna — 2013-02-13T04:20:53Z

The study by a Canadian university has found that some major Indian ISPs have deployed web-censorship and filtering technology.

The article by T Ramachandran was published in the Hindu on February 9, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

Your internet service provider (ISP) could be blocking some content. A study conducted by a Canadian university has found that some major Indian ISPs have deployed web-censorship and filtering technology widely used in China and some West Asian countries.

The findings, published on January 15, were the result of a search for censorship software and hardware on public networks like those operated by ISPs.

A research team at Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary laboratory based at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, found a software-hardware combo package called PacketShaper being used in many parts of the world, including India.

The study identified the presence of four PacketShaper installations on the networks of three major ISPs in India during the period of study in late 2012. These ISPs had been earlier “implicated in filtering to some degree,” the report said.

The deployment of such traffic management technologies by ISPs could threaten privacy, freedom of expression and competition, said Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of the Bangalore-based NGO, Centre for Internet and Society.

He said tools like PacketShaper could be used by ISPs for two types of censorship —“to block entire websites or choke traffic on certain services or destinations in a highly granular fashion.”

The U.S.-based producers of the technology, Blue Coat Systems, are quite open about the product features on the company’s website. They say it could be used to control and weed out undesirable content. It could also be used to slow down or speed up the operation of programmes and content flow to achieve the goals set by the operators of the networks.

Transparency is the key

Technology experts said such products could be used to exercise legitimate control over the internet traffic and prioritise the use of bandwidth and resources, if used ethically.

“If done in a transparent manner that does not discriminate against different actors within a class it does benefit the collective interest of the ISP’s clients. However, it could also be used to engage in hidden censorship against legitimate speech and also for anti-competitive behaviour,” said Mr. Abraham.

The study focussed on countries where concerns exist over “compliance with international human rights law, legal due process, freedom of speech, surveillance, and censorship.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-feb-9-2013-t-ramachandran-indian-net-service-providers-too-play-censorship-tricks

Online Abuse of Teen Girls in Kashmir Leads to Arrests

praskrishna — 2013-03-06T03:51:20Z

Online abuse and a fatwa aimed at a rock band of Muslim teenage girls in Kashmir have led to arrests and a threat of a lawsuit.

This article by Betwa Sharma was published in the New York Times on February 8, 2013. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Three men were arrested this week for posting threatening messages on the Facebook page of Praagaash, an amateur rock band in Indian-occupied Kashmir made of up Muslim girls. “The investigation is ongoing,” said Manoj Pandita, spokesman for the Jammu and Kashmir police, indicating that more arrests may follow.

The three men were charged under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, which applies to “offensive” messages being sent through communication services, and Section 506 of the Ranbir Penal Code, which applies to criminal intimidation. Mr. Pandita said that it had been easy to track the I.P. addresses of the Facebook users.

A prominent human rights lawyer, Parvez Imroz of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, is planning to sue the top religious leader in Kashmir, who called for the fatwa, for “demonizing Kashmir before the international community” and for “running a parallel judicial system in the valley.”

Mr. Imroz told India Ink that human rights organizations like his needed support from the international community to highlight their concerns, and such fatwas reflected badly on the Kashmiri society. “He is diverting attention away from real issues of human rights to nonissues like music and purdah,” Mr. Imroz said.

The fatwa against the band was issued by the Grand Mufti Bashiruddin Ahmad.

In his fatwa, Mr. Ahmad advised women to only sing inside the house to other female members of the family, and wear a veil whenever they left the house. “They must stay within limits,” he said.

Following the band’s first live performance in December, Aneeqa Khalid, Noma Nazir and Farah Deeba, 10th-grade students who are 15 and 16 years old, became the target of abuse and threats on Facebook by people who accused them of being un-Islamic because they had performed in public, especially before men. Some commenters called them “sluts” and “prostitutes;” others suggested that they should be raped.

The band Praagaash, which means “darkness into light,” disbanded following a national controversy surrounding these threatening messages. The threats were condemned by many, including the state’s chief minister.

To many Kashmiris, both the fatwa and the arrests by the government are unnecessary. Some say that the controversy erupted after the state’s chief minister, Omar Abdullah, got involved by expressing his support for the band on Twitter and then calling for investigation against those writing the threatening messages.

“Nobody here had a problem with the rock band,” said Aala Fazili, a doctorate student at Kashmir University, pointing out that the band’s performance in December had not led to any protests or physical threats against them.

Mr. Fazili, 32, added that people shouldn’t be arrested for writing abusive posts on Facebook. “You cannot call an abuse a threat,” he said.

Mr. Pandita, the Kashmir police spokesman, said the investigators were making a distinction between a threat and abuse on the basis of “gravity.”

Pranesh Prakash, from the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, asked whether people who hold protests calling for the death of the author Salman Rushdie should also be arrested for making threats.

“I would hold that no expression of violent thoughts, online or offline, should be made criminal, even if it is repugnantly misogynistic, unless it takes the form of a credible threat that causes harm, or is harassment that constitutes harm,” he said.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/ny-times-feb-8-2013-betwa-sharma-online-abuse-of-teen-girls-in-kashmir-leads-to-arrests

RTI on Complaints under Section 79 of IT Act

praskrishna — 2013-06-12T09:50:40Z

The Department of Electronics and Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, gave its reply to an RTI application filed by Saket Bisani. We are reproducing the text below:

No. 14(146)/2012-ESD
M/o Communications & Information Technololgy
Department of Electronics & Information Technology
Electronics Niketan,6, CGO Complex
New Delhi-110003

																					Dated: 15.1.13

Subject: RTI application received from Shri Saket Biswani

With reference to your RTI application requesting for the following information.

In an article titled "We believe in the freedom of speech and expression" published in Mint of February 1, 2012, Dr. Gulshan Rai has been quoted saying:

"if the police say something has to be disabled, we tell then (Google and others) that a complaint has come under section 79 of the IT Act. We feel them: "we're bringing it to your notice. Please look at it and do whatever best you can do under the law."

With respect the above quote I request you to provide me the following information under Right to Information Act, 2005:

Please provide me a copy of every complaint that has been received by the Department of Information Technology (now the Department of Electronics and Information Technology) under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000.
Please provide me a copy of every notice and complaint that your office has sent pursuant to complaints received under section79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

The information as received from the custodian of the information is placed below:

Department of Electronics and Information Technology has not received any complaint quoting specifically under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act,2000.
Not applicable.

																		(A.K. Kaushik) Additional Director & CPIO (E-Security & Cyber Laws)

Shri Saket Bisani
No. 194, 2nd ׳C Cross
Domlur 2nd Stage *
Bangalore-560 071

Read a scanned version of the reply that we got from the Department of Electronics and Information Technology.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/resources/rti-on-complaints-under-it-act-section-79

9th International Asian Conference

praskrishna — 2013-01-25T18:20:22Z

ITechLaw is organizing the 9th Annual Asian ITechLaw Conference on February 14 and 15, 2013 in India's high technology capital - Bangalore, India. Sunil Abraham will be speaking at this event.

This info was published on ITechLaw website on January 22, 2013.

This conference will focus on the latest regulatory, commercial and technology law issues being faced by emerging and growth industries in India and Asia as well as the U.S. and Europe.

Conference Program

Day 1, Thursday, February 14, 2013

07:45 - 08:45	Breakfast
09:00 - 09:10	Plenary Welcome Presidential Welcome John Beardwood, Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP, Toronto
09:10 - 09:30	Keynote Address (TBD)
09:30 - 11:15	Intellectual Property Moderator: Calab Gabriel, K&S Partners, New Delhi TBD Pravin Anand, Anand & Anand, New Delhi ISP Liability for IP Infringements Paulo Brancher, BKBG Attorneys at Law, Sao Paulo, Brazil John Doe IP Enforcement in India Sundari Pisupati, Tempus Law & Associates, Hyderabad Counterfeiting in the context of the Semiconductor Industry Gaurav Jabulee, Senior Counsel - Asia, Texas Instruments, Bangalore
11:15 - 11:30	Coffee / Tea / Networking Break
11:30 - 13:00	M & A in the Technology Sector Moderator: Manjula Chawla, Phoenix Legal, New Delhi Successor Liability Sadhana Kaul, GC, 3M, Bangalore Tax Planning for Software and Intellectual Property Transactions Roger Royse, Royse Law Firm, Palo Alto, California Post-M & A Integration of a Tech Company Sivaram Nair, General Counsel, Mphasis India, Bangalore
13:00 - 14:00	Buffet Lunch and Networking
14:00 - 15:30	Licensing and Contracting Moderator: Azmul Haque, Shook Lin & Bok LLP, Singapore Software Licensing Stephane Lemarchand, DLA Piper, Paris, France Contract Termination Richard Marke, BWB, London, UK 21st Century Sourcing - Latest Negotiation Trends and Alternative Contracting Models Nick Pantlin, Herbert Smith Freehills LLP, London, UK Internet Gaming and Gambling Moderator: Ananth Padmanabhan, Advocate, Madras High Court Social Gaming Jenna Karadbil, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, New York Indian Issues in Gaming and Gambling Regulations Talha Salaria, Lawyers at Work, Bangalore Amrut Joshi, Gamechanger Sports Ventures, Bangalore
15:30 - 15:45	Coffee / Tea / Networking Break
15:45 - 17:30	Privacy Issues relating to Employee Data Moderator: Poorvi Chothani, LawQuest International, Mumbai Legal Barriers for BYOD Strategies - A Holistic Approach to Legal Compliance and Security Martin Wiechers, Deutsche Telekom, Germany EU Employee Data Protection Roland Falder, Bird & Bird, Munich, Germany TBD Frederique David, Co-founding partner, TLD Legal, Paris, France Miscellaneous Hot Topics Moderator: Vineet Subramani, Versus, Mumbai Creating an Open Source Policy Heather Meeker, Greenberg Traurig, Palo Alto, California Journalism using Social Media - Issues relating to Freedom of Expression, Privacy and Interpretation of India's Information Technology Act. Swati Sukumar, Advocate, New Delhi Estate Planning for Digital Properties Wendy Goffe, Stoel Rives, Seattle, WA, USA
18:00 - 19:00	I-WIN Tea
19:30 - 22:00	Gala Dinner (Ticketed Event)

Day 2, Friday, February 15, 2013

08:00 - 08:45	Breakfast
09:00 - 09:30	Keynote Address (TBD)
09:30 - 11:15	Privacy: Data Protection Issues Across the Globe Moderator: Gabriela Kennedy, Hogan Lovells, Hong Kong Cross Border Transfers of Employee Data Dr. Wolfgang Büchner, Jones Day, Munich, Germany Data Protection Reform in the EU Kristian Foss, Gille advokater DA, Oslo, Norway Addressing the Criminal Aspects of Data Protection Violations Claire Bernier, Altanalaw, Paris, France
11:15 - 11:30	Coffee / Tea / Networking Break
11:30 - 13:00	E-Commerce Moderator: Raji Nagarkar, Cisco, Bangalore Privacy Aspects of E-Commerce in Australia Philip Catania, Corrs Chambers Westgart, Melbourne, Australia Retail Trading and E-Commerce in India Samuel Mani, MCM, Bangalore Commerce in the Social Media TBD
13:00 - 14:00	Buffet Lunch and Networking
14:00 - 15:30	Outsourcing Moderator: Bradley Joslove, Franklin, Paris Current Issues - Customer Perspective Mark Rasdale, A&L Goodbody, Dublin, Ireland Current Issues - Service Provider Perspective Kalpana Muthireddi, CSC India, Bangalore 2nd Generation Outsourcing Transactions Ulrich Baeumer, Osborne Clarke, Cologne, Germany
15:30 - 15:45	Coffee / Tea / Networking Break
15:45 - 17:00	Cloud 2.0 Issues Moderator: Rajesh Narang, VP legal & CS, Mindtree, Bangalore Virtual Offices and Cloud Computing - Legal Issues Genevieve Gill, GenLaw, Auckland, New Zealand Regulating the Cloud S.P. Purwar, J. Sagar Associates, Gurgaon Information Security in the Cloud Nagakumar Somasundaram, Amba Research, Bangalore
17:00 - 18:00	Censorship of Online Content Moderator: Stephen Mathias, Kochhar & Co., Bangalore Panel Discussion with the following Panelist Marc S Friedman, SNR Denton, New York, USA Priti Suri, PSA, New Delhi Sunil Abraham, Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society
18:00 - 18-30	Closing Remarks Raffle Valedictory John Beardwood, Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP, Toronto
18:30 - 20:00	Closing Reception

See the speakers list here

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/itech-law-india-ninth-intl-asian-conference

Internet Freedom in India – Open to Debate

praskrishna — 2013-01-25T10:45:56Z

In the aftermath of an Index on Censorship debate in New Delhi, Kirsty Hughes says India’s web users are standing at a crossroads

This article by Kirsty Hughes was published in Index on Censorship. CIS's research on censorship is quoted.

If debate is a sign of a positive environment for internet freedom, then India scores highly. From debates in parliament, and panel discussions (including Index’s own recent event) to newspaper editorials, blogs and tweets on the rights and wrongs of internet freedom, controls on the web, and India’s position in the international debate, there is no shortage of voices and views.

India has around 120 million web users — a large number but still only about 10 per cent of the country’s population. As cheaper smart phones enable millions more to access the net on their mobiles, India’s net savvy population is set to soar in the next few years. But what sort of online environment they will find is open to question — and to wide debate.

India has some very broad laws that could apply to a wide range of online speech, comment and criticism. These laws have been so far rather randomly applied. But the cases that have arisen — from individuals criticising politicians by email, Facebook or Twitter to some of the big web companies such as Google and Facebook (both facing numerous takedown requests and court cases in India) — show just why India needs to look at limiting both the range of some of its net laws, and to stop these laws criminalising a range of speech.

In 2012, there was widespread outcry in India when two women were arrested for complaining on Facebook about the disruption caused by the funeral of Bal Thackeray, leader of the right wing Hindu party, Shiv Sena. They were arrested under the infamous section 66A of India’s IT Act (2008) which criminalises “grossly offensive” and “menacing” messages sent by electronic means, but also “false” messages sent to cheat, deceive, mislead or annoy, taking online censorship beyond offline laws.

India’s telecom minister Kapil Sibal spoke out against the arrests. And as part of the fallout, guidelines were announced that in future any such charges could only be brought by senior police. But how effective such a restriction might be was challenged, with aTimes of India editorial suggesting “rampant political interference in law enforcement is itself a burning issue…so to argue that senior police officers will always resist mob pressure or political diktats isn’t persuasive.”

Other parts of the IT Act (2008) are also causing a chilling atmosphere in India’s cyber sphere — with new regulations introduced in 2011 obliging internet service providers to take down content within 36 of a complaint (whether an individual, organisation, government body or anyone else) or face prosecution. The law covers a sweeping range of grounds for complaint, including “grossly harmful”, “harassing, “blasphemous” and more. It also is confused on liability – holding intermediaries large and small responsible for content on websites and platforms.

One of India’s leading policy centres on digital issues, the Centre for Internet and Society, decided to test how this 36-hour takedown rule could result in censorship of innocuous and legal content on web sites. They sent complaints to four main search engines across a range of content — and as a result got thousands of innocuous posts removed; a censor’s dream outcome.

Despite a debate in parliament calling for repeal of the 2011 rules, for now they remain.

Some observers suggest the Indian government is catch-up mode, not fully understanding the reach or nature of social media or how to deal with the international range and speed of the web today — something plenty of other governments around the world are showing some confusion about. Some think the lively debate on net freedom in India reflects the voice and demands of the growing Indian middle class. But whether those demands remain pro-freedom is yet to be seen as internet penetration grows apace.

There are some other encouraging signs. While many in India are not keen at US dominance of key parts of internet regulation, there was concern from business and civil society ahead of the International Telecommunications Union summit in December 2012, when the Indian government looked like it might advocate some form of top down control of the web as an alternative. In the event, India, like the EU and US, did not go along with Russia, China and others keen to include net governance into the ITU’s remit.

India is going to be an increasingly influential voice in global internet debates — with its rapidly growing number of netizens and its increasing clout more widely in a multipolar world.

Its healthy and lively debate about digital freedom stands as a beacon of hope in the face of some of its more disturbing laws. But the laws will need to change, if India is to be a country that stands for internet freedom.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/index-on-censorship-kirsty-hughes-january-22-2013-internet-freedom-in-india

Cyber security, surveillance and the right to privacy: country perspectives

praskrishna — 2013-01-23T12:10:23Z

This blog post is fourth in a series of eight blog posts to report on the “Third South Asian Meeting on the Internet and Freedom of Expression” recently concluded in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

This post was published in the Internet Democracy Project Website on January 22, 2013. All the blog posts in this series are written by Richa Kaul Padte, the official rapporteur at the meeting.

'The best way to protect people’s rights is to enable people to protect their rights themselves' – Chinmayi Arun

Pranesh Prakash, CIS India	Opening the session on cyber security, surveillance and privacy, moderator Pranesh Prakash from the Centre for Internet and Society (India) frames the debate by talking about how the principles raised by discussions on security, privacy and surveillance are always in tension with each other. ‘The boundaries that have been drawn in a pre-digital era don’t apply online always [and] the classic model of state-controlled surveillance is not as relevant [today].’

Taking forward the discussion by setting both a global and national framework around the issue, Assistant Professor at the Delhi-based National Law University Chinmayi Arun brings to light the ways in which cyber security is consistently tabled on several global agendas; however, with little to no meaningful parallel discussions around the right to privacy. She also connects the idea of surveillance to notions of censorship vis a vis freedom of expression, and poignantly states: ‘surveillance is a lot more insidious than censorship – [so much] more can take place before people realise it is happening.’ Prakash furthers this idea in his transition between country perspectives by highlighting the ways in which surveillance measures are already established and heavily pervasive, with both Prakash and Arun advocating greater transparency in areas where these measures are in place. As Arun says, ‘it’s not true that every instance of surveillance needs to be secret until it’s done’, and distinguishing between necessary surveillance measures (in the case of crime investigations, for example) and those that position all people as criminals who must be monitored, is key to taking the discussion forward.

Chinmayi Arun, National Law University Delhi, India

Mohammed Nazmuzzaman Bhuian, Dhaka University

Mohammad Nazmuzzaman Bhuian, an Associate Professor from the University of Dhaka, opens a Bangladeshi country perspective with the question, ‘how does a cyber security act become a surveillance act?’ A cyber crime refers to any crime that involves a computer or a network, and the crimes under this can play out in two ways. The computer itself may be a target, or it may be used to carry out a crime. It is when it is used to carry out a crime that the question of online surveillance arises

Offering another perspective from Bangladesh, Head of the Centre for IT Security and Privacy and Assistant Professor, University of Asia Pacific, Mohammad Shahriar Rahman, discusses the manipulation of security and surveillance laws by the State in order to create greater security for itself. He cites the ban of YouTube in the country in response to a US-produced video ridiculing the Prophet Mohammed and the attacks on bloggers who have advocated for free speech on the Internet, including speech that may be anti-authoritarian or anti-religious. These examples echo Mariyath Mohamed’s perspectives on the interplay between religion, politics and censorship from the previous session, which clearly resound through many South Asian countries.

Mohammad Shahriar Rahman, University of Asia Pacific, Bangladesh

Kailash Prasad Neupane, Nepal Telecommunications Authority	Perspectives from Nepal, offered by speaker Kailash Prasad Neupane from the Nepal Telecommunications Authority, highlight the acute similarities between the laws in different South Asian countries, which all position the freedom of expression as ‘subject to certain restrictions’, where the subjectivity of the clause tends to be interpreted by a powerful and majority State against its minority citizens, thus undermining both democracy and citizens’ rights. As Rahman says, ‘if the government wants to be seen as democratic in these times, they need to realise you can’t jail everyone who is critical of the Prime Minister.’

Speaking from the floor, Bishakha Datta, from Mumbai-based women’s media organisation Point of View, expands on the speakers’ views by highlighting the ways in which, given the extensive measures of State security and surveillance, societies themselves become structured around a culture of surveillance that citizens in turn internalise and see as a necessary part of their lives. She asks, ‘when we talk about the right to privacy, are we saying that we are willing to accept surveillance as long as our privacy is maintained, or are we opposing it on the grounds of privacy?’ Echoing Prakash’s idea that ‘the way in which security and privacy are portrayed as being at loggerheads is false’, Arun responds to Datta by advocating privacy as the starting point for all discussions surrounding security. In summary she states, ‘we must underline our right to privacy,and that right must always dominate. One must always start with that right, and then narrow the circumstances in which, only when it is absolutely necessary and to the extent absolutely necessary, it may be violated.’ And it is through this consistent demand for the right to privacy, and the placing of citizens and individuals (rather than the interests of the State) at the heart of these conversations, that we can see security and privacy as co-existing notions that work to ensure, rather than suppress, freedom of expression.	Bishakha Datta, Point of View, India

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/internet-democracy-richa-kaul-padte-jan-22-2013-cyber-security-surveillance-and-the-right-to-privacy

TV versus Social Media: The Rights and Wrongs

sunil — 2013-01-21T03:09:56Z

For most ordinary Netizens, everyday speech on social media has as much impact as graffiti in a toilet, and therefore employing the 'principle of equivalence' will result in overregulation of new media.

Sunil Abraham's guest column was published in the Tribune on January 20, 2013.

Many in traditional media, especially television, look at social media with a mixture of envy and trepidation. They have been at the receiving end of various unsavoury characters online and consequently support regulation of social media. A common question asked by television anchors is "shouldn't they be subject to the same regulation as us?" This is because they employ the 'principle of equivalence', according to which speech that is illegal on broadcast media should also be illegal on social media and vice versa. According to this principle, criticising a bandh on national TV or in a newspaper op-ed or on social media should not result in jail time and, conversely, publishing obscene content, in either new or old media, should render you a guest of the state.

Given that Section 66-A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, places more draconian and arguably unconstitutional limits on free speech when compared to the regulation of traditional and broadcast media, those in favour of civil liberties may be tempted to agree with the 'principle of equivalence' since that will mean a great improvement from status quo. However, we must remember that this compromise goes too far since potential for harm through social media is usually very limited when compared to traditional media, especially when it comes to hate speech, defamation and infringement of privacy. A Facebook update or 'like' or a tweet from an ordinary citizen usually passes completely unnoticed. On rare occasion, an expression on social media originating from an ordinary citizen goes viral and then the potential for harm increases dramatically. But since this is the fringe case we cannot design policy based on it. On the other hand, public persons (those occupying public office and those in public life), including television journalists, usually have tens and hundreds of thousands friends and followers on these social networks and, therefore, can more consistently cause harm through their speech online. For most ordinary Netizens, everyday speech on social media has as much impact as graffiti in a public or residential toilet and therefore employing the 'principle of equivalence' will result in overregulation of new media.

Ideally speech regulation should address the asymmetries in the global attention economy by constantly examining the potential for harm. This applies to both 'speech about' public persons and also 'speech by' them. Since 'speech about' public persons is necessary for transparent and accountable governance and public discourse, such speech must be regulated less than 'speech about' ordinary citizens. Let us understand this using two examples: One, a bunch of school kids referring to a classmate as an idiot on a social network is bullying, but citizens using the very same term to criticise a minister or television anchor must be permitted. Two, an ordinary citizen should be allowed to photograph or video-record the acts of a film or sports star at a public location and upload it to a social network, but this exception to the right of privacy based on public interest will not imply that the same ordinary citizen can publish photographs or videos of other ordinary citizens. Public scrutiny and criticism is part of the price to be paid for occupying public office or public life. If speech regulation is configured to prevent damage to the fragile egos of public persons, then it would have a chilling effect on many types of speech that are critical in a democracy and an open society.

When it comes to 'speech by' those in public office or in public life - given the greater potential for harm - they should be held more liable for their actions online. For example, an ordinary citizen with less than 100 followers causes very limited harm to the reputation of a particular person through a defamatory tweet. However, if the very same tweet is retweeted by a television anchor with millions of followers, there can be more severe damage to that particular person's reputation.

Many in television also wish to put an end to anonymous and pseudonymous speech online. They would readily agree with Nandan Nilekani's vision of tagging all - visits to the cyber cafe, purchases of broadband connections and SIM cards and, therefore, all activities from social media accounts with the UID number. I have been following coverage of the Aadhaar project for the past three years. Often I see a 'senior official from the UIDAI' make a controversial point. If anonymous speech is critical to protect India's identity project then surely it is an important form of speech. But, unlike the print media, which more regularly uses anonymous sources for their stories, television doesn't see clearly the connection between anonymous speech and free media. This is because many of the trolls that harass them online often hide behind pseudonymous identities. Television forgets that anonymous speech is at the very foundation of our democracy, i.e., the electoral ballot.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/sunday-tribune-january-20-2013-sunil-abraham-tv-vs-social-media

Is freedom of expression under threat in the digital age?

praskrishna — 2013-02-03T10:50:52Z

This week Index held a high level panel debate in partnership with the Editors Guild of India and the India International Centre to discuss the question “Is freedom of expression under threat in the digital age?” Mahima Kaul reports

This post by Mahima Kaul was published in Index on Censorship on January 18, 2013.

Index on Censorship, in partnership with The Editors Guild of India, hosted a debate in New Delhi on Tuesday (15 January) asking, “Is freedom of expression under threat in the digital age?” Discussing the topic were Ajit Balakrishnan (founder and Chief Executive of rediff.com), Index on Censorship CEO Kirsty Hughes, Sunil Abraham (Executive Director of the centre for Internet and Society), and Professor Timothy Garton Ash, Director of the Free Speech Debate project.

Sunil Abraham questioned the idea of technology specific “internet freedom” that has been advocated by many not least the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He said there was for instance much greater freedom and diversity on Indian TV than in the US. He also argued that that this freedom does not seem to extend to a right of access to knowledge, as demonstrated by the charges brought against open access activist and developer Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide earlier this month. Swartz was facing charges for allegedly downloading 4.8 million academic articles from subscription-only digital library JSTOR.

Abraham said one unintentional effect of censorship by governments is that it teaches citizens how to protect themselves online. Finally, he questioned the Indian government’s draconian laws and arbitrary actions in the digital realm, wondering whether this is the authorities’ way of warning future netizens about “acceptable online behaviour”, to condition the public not to criticise the government and to create a chilling effect.

Digital

Is freedom of expression under threat in the digital age?

18 Jan 2013

This week Index held a high level panel debate in partnership with the Editors Guild of India and the India International Centre to discuss the question “Is freedom of expression under threat in the digital age?” Mahima Kaul reports

Freedom of expression is always under threat and in need of defending, argued Timothy Garton Ash. However, he didn’t think the threat was particularly high today in the digital realm — rather the threats to privacy were what were particularly concerning online. With 76.8 per cent of India’s 1.2 billion population connected by mobile phone, there is an extraordinary opportunity for the prevalence of freedom of expression brought about by new technologies. But he said there are also a lot of challenges to free expression in India — and that “swing states” such as Brazil and India will be very important in determining where the global conversation goes on freedom of expression

Ajit Balakrishnan, founder of web portal Rediff.com, explained that many of the problems that have occurred in the digital realm in India have to do with poor drafting of legislation. He was particularly concerned about intermediary liability and explained why and how intermediaries roles needed protecting. He also explained that government officials have genuine problems with phrasing, and that when it comes to the application of these laws, understanding them and when they should be applied will take another 25 years. He added that the country is challenged by a legal system ill-equipped for coping with new technologies.

Kirsty Hughes said that freedom of expression is a universal right, meant to be applied across borders not just within countries. She said that while the digital domain allowed a big expansion in freedom of expression there were risks we are heading towards a more controlled net, a partially censored net, and a fragmented net (for instance with Iran attempting to build its own internet disconnected from the rest of the world). She said that some of the negative reactions by government to social media in India were seen to in the UK where there had been a trend towards criminalising supposedly offensive comment — although the new interim guidelines on social media prosecutions were a step in the right direction. Hughes emphasised three main concerns — state censorship, privatisation of censorship and the role of big companies, and mass surveillance. She pointed out that the British government had pushed for extensive surveillance with the Communications Data Bill, but this has now been shelved after a critical report from MPs.

Ramanjit Singh Chima, policy adviser for Google, said that the question is not about absolute freedom, but about what is appropriate and lawful. He emphasised that in the US, judges had strongly defended free expression online as they saw the digital world as a powerful space for free exprssion. He pointed out how effective social media tools, including Google’s own products, have become in helping during emergency situations like natural disasters and terrorist attacks. He also pointed out that the internet is not only about free expression but business as well. The internet contributes to 1.6 per cent of India’s GDP. Singh Chima said positive judgements by US and EU courts protect the users, adding that regulation for the net should be appropriate for its engineering.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/index-on-censorship-mahima-kaul-january-18-2013-is-freedom-of-expression-under-threat-in-the-digital-age

Is freedom of expression under threat in digital age?

praskrishna — 2013-01-17T06:16:09Z

With social networking site Facebook boasting of 1 billion members globally and micro-blogging site Twitter claiming millions, opinion was divided on whether the freedom of expression was under threat in the digital age.

This article was originally published by Indo Asian News Service on January 16, 2013. It was also covered in Business Standard, Vancouver Desi, DNA, and Tech2. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

"Censorship of content should be the last resort as curbing a particular content online actually amplifies its spread over the internet," said Sunil Abraham from Centre for Internet and Society.

He was speaking at a panel discussion organised by London based Index on Censorship and the Editors Guild of India on the issue at the India International Centre Tuesday evening.

"The government has refused to amend Section 66(A) of the IT Act which is used to curb free speech on the net," said Guild chief TN Ninan who moderated the debate. "The law treats digital media differently than the print media," he said.

Director of Free Speech Debate, Oxford University, Timothy Garton Ash said, "There was no threat to the freedom of speech as internet was actually an opportunity for spreading freedom of expression."

India with the large number of net users could act as swing state between two extremes of China which is trying to control the net and the US which champions free speech, he said.

"The question is what are the legitimate limits of free speech rather than asking for unlimited speech," said Ash.

Ajit Balakrishnan, CEO and founder of online portal rediff.com, said "there was a sense of powerlessness among nation states as only local laws applied to any such violations."

He said the internet was not so democratic as it sounded as the actual numbers of users who posted content on Facebook were just 8-9 million while the rest just watched. The same was with Twitter with just 7-8 percent users actually posting messages.

Kirsty Hughes, CEO, Index on Censorship, said "freedom of speech was universal" while noting a "worrying trend that increasingly governments were moving to control the internet."

"The risks of such controls are that we could have a much more controlled, censored and fragmented internet," she said.

Ramanjit Singh Chima of Google India stressed on the need to have laws to protect internet freedom as such curbs affected livelihood of many users and contributed to local economies.

He said the internet allowed people to instantly collaborate and publish critical information during emergency situations.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/ians-news-is-freedomexpression-under-threat-in-digital-age

Statement of Solidarity on Freedom of Expression and Safety of Internet Users in Bangladesh

pranesh — 2013-01-15T11:51:44Z

This is a statement on the violent attack on blogger Asif Mohiuddin by the participants to the Third South Asian Meeting on the Internet and Freedom of Expression that took place in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on January 14–15, 2013.

Bangladeshi blogger Asif Mohiuddin was brutally attacked in a stabbing last evening. His condition is currently said to be critical. Violent attacks on mediapersons have led to at least four deaths in the past year. This trend is now extending to those writing online.

It is the duty of societies at large to ensure that principles we universally consider sacrosanct, such as the right to life and liberty and of freedom of expression are in fact ideas, and of the government to actively protect the rights guaranteed under the Constitution of Bangladesh and to ensure they are not just words on paper.

Article 39 of the Constitution of Bangladesh—and Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—guarantee both the freedom of thought and conscience, as well as the right of every citizen of freedom of speech and expression, and freedom of the press.

Article 32 of the Constitution of Bangladesh—and Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—guarantee that no person shall be deprived of life or personal liberty except by law.

The attack on Asif Mohiuddin constitutes a violation these fundamental principle by criminals, and we request the government to act decisively to show it will not tolerate such violations.

Reporters Without Borders note that "the ability of those in the media to work freely has deteriorated alarmingly in Bangladesh, which is now ranked 129th of 179 countries in the 2011-2012 World Press Freedom Index".

In general, the situation of those working as non-professional 'citizen journalists' is even worse. In a 2010 report, the UN Special Rapporteur wrote:

"Citizen journalists are by nature more isolated, they are more vulnerable to attack than professional journalists. However, citizen journalists enjoy less protection than their counterparts in traditional media, as they do not have the support of media organizations and networks, in particular the organizational resources, including lawyers and financial resources, which can help shield them from harassment."

This reality of greater vulnerability is equally applicable to those who do not self-identify as 'citizen journalists', but use social media to express unpopular opinions.

Keeping this in mind, we call upon the government on Bangladesh to carry out swift investigations into this particular incident and bring the perpetrators to justice, and to grant greater legal support to citizen journalists and ensure better protections for all those who use the Internet as a means of expression.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/statement-of-solidarity-asif-mohiuddin

Third South Asian Meeting on the Internet and Freedom of Expression

praskrishna — 2013-01-17T07:16:58Z

Internet Democracy Project, Voices for Interactive Choice & Empowerment and Global Partners & Associates are organizing this event in Dhaka on January 14 - 15, 2013.

Pranesh Prakash is moderating the session on "Understanding cyber security and surveillance in South Asia today". Chinmayi Arun is speaking in this panel.

The Third South Asian Meeting on the Internet and Freedom of Expression seeks to address the question of how freedom of expression on the Internet is best protected by taking as its starting point two of the biggest challenges for freedom of expression online in South Asia today: hate speech online on the one hand, and cyber security and surveillance on the other.

The meeting seeks to investigate how these challenges affect freedom of expression on the Internet as well as how they can be addressed most effectively while protecting free speech online. It will also touch briefly on the important question of what kind of Internet governance processes are most likely to ensure the desired outcomes materialise.

A very short history of the South Asian Meeting on the Internet and Freedom of Expression
The first South Asian Meeting on the Internet and Freedom of Expression took place in March 2011 in Delhi, and mapped the many challenges for free speech online in our region, as an input into the report on the Internet and freedom of expression of UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Mr. Frank La Rue.

The second South Asian Meeting, in Kathmandu in November 2011, assessed the extent to which policy and regulation in the South Asian countries complied with the recommendations Mr. La Rue made in his report.

This third meeting will now build on these earlier efforts by bringing together experts from civil society, business, the research community and other stakeholder groups from across the region to discuss two of the biggest shared challenges for freedom of expression online in South Asia today in detail: the rising visibility of hate speech on the one hand, and the impact of discourses regarding cyber security and surveillance on the other.

Why focus on hate speech and security/surveillance now?
Since UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Mr. Frank La Rue, presented his report on the Internet and freedom of expression to the UN Human Rights Council in June 2011, the complexity of this topic has received growing recognition. However, not all trends that La Rue had pointed out as directly affecting freedom of expression online – from access to the Internet to cyber attacks – are equally important in the South Asian region. Detailed analysis in several South Asian countries has shown that, though Internet penetration rates remain fairly low, most countries do possess, for example, the political will crucial to improve these figures. The two trends that seem to be of greatest concern in our region are that of the fight against hate speech, and the impact on freedom of expression of cyber security and surveillance measures. The latter is foregrounded for a variety of reasons ranging from the safety of individual users to national security.

Incidentally, across the region, as in many parts of the world, hate speech and cyber security have also been among the most important reasons governments have quoted to justify greater government control over the Internet. At the national level, this has at times manifested itself through the approval and implementation of legislation that has far-reaching consequences for freedom of speech online, without consulting many of the stakeholders who are affected at any point in time. At the global level, we see a growing number of proposals by governments that would effectively expand their collective powers to regulate the Internet, though with varying levels of involvement of other stakeholders envisioned.

Yet while governments' intentions when imposing censorship or approving surveillance measures may at times be in doubt, it is difficult to deny that the Internet has facilitated a new proliferation of hate speech, as well as that it has thrown up new security challenges that couldn't even be imagined before.

It is therefore our contention that the challenges of hate speech online and of ensuring cyber security in our region are real, and need to be addressed head-on if we are to strengthen and protect the right to freedom of expression online. For this reason, the meeting seeks to investigate both the precise nature of these challenges and what Internet governance mechanisms we need to evolve to ensure that they can be addressed most effectively whilst upholding and strengthening the right to freedom of expression. If we are to take the challenges the threats of hate speech and cyber security policy embody seriously yet also aim to uphold and strengthen the right to freedom of expression online, then what are the solutions we require? And who will need to be responsible for implementing them?

Participants
Taking into account the many parallels in the shape problems of hate speech and cyber security and surveillance take across the South Asian region as a result of shared cultures and historical legacies alike, participants will be invited from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Moreover, as solutions to these problems will invariably require collaboration among various stakeholders in the Internet governance field in order to be effective, participants will be drawn from a wide variety of stakeholder groups, including civil society, business, government, academia and the media from across the region. In this way, the meeting hopes tofacilitate a South Asia wide, multistakeholder dialogue, to learn, discuss and evolve more detailed thinking on these topics for one and a half days. The meeting will come to an end with a public event at the end of the second day.

The meeting will use a variety of formats, including key note presentations, panel discussions, case studies and small group conversations.

Agenda

January 14, 2013

9.00-09.45	Welcome and introductions to participants
09.45-10.15	Introduction to the meeting: the challenge that hate speech online and cyber security/surveillance pose to freedom of expression on the Internet – Dixie Hawtin Intro: Internet governance and human rights issues in general Why is this event focussed on hate speech and surveillance?
10.15-10.45	Tea/coffee break
10.45-12.15	The challenge of hate speech on the Internet in South Asia Strengthening the right to freedom of expression to curtail hate speech (Anja Kovacs) Three country perspectives, from the Maldives (Mariyath Mohamed), Pakistan (tbc), and Bangladesh (Salim Khan) Moderator: Bishakha Datta
12.15-13:30	Lunch
13.30-14.00	Keynote: Thinking about a rights-based approach to cyber security and surveillance as it relates to speech – KS Park
14.00-15.30	Understanding cyber security and surveillance in South Asia today With Three country perspectives from Bangladesh (Mohammad Rahman), Nepal (Kailash Prasad Neupane) and India (Chinmayi Arun). Moderator: Pranesh Prakash
15.30-16:00	Tea/coffee break
16.00-17.30	Legal and ethical questions and challenges when addressing cyber security and surveillance: two case studies – Rohan Samarajiva

January 15, 2013

9.00-9.15	Introduction to day 2
9.15-9.45	Cybersecurity, surveillance and hate speech online – key issues that need to be addressed in governance in order to protect Internet freedom of expession. This session will discuss particular issues that have relevance for both cyber security debates and hate speech issues in greater depth. Four topics that will be addressed are: The question of anonimity (KS Park) Cross-border cooperation and other jurisdictional issues in context of cloud computing and crossborder data flows and storage (Aditya Rao) Domain Names and registration (Babu Ram Aryal) Intermediaries as law enforcers (Suman Pradhan) Moderator: Shahzad Ahmed
10.45-11.00	Tea/coffee break
11.00-13.00	What kind of solutions could a rights-based approach throw up to the challenges raised so far in the meeting? Open discussion in groups and plenary, following key note speaker, Bulbul Monjurul Ahsan
13.00-13.30	Summing up and thank you
13.30-15.00	Lunch
15:00 – 16:00	Meeting participants move to venue for public meeting, tea/coffee break and arrival of wider public
16.00-18.30	PUBLIC EVENT: The Internet and freedom of expression Confirmed speakers include: Abu Taher, Info Commissioner; Iftekharuzzaman, Executive Director, Transparency International Bangladesh; Sarah Hossain, Lawyer and Honorary Executive Director, BLAST; Shaheen Anam, Executive Director, Manusher Jonno Foundation; Monjurul Ahsan Bulbul, eminent journalist and CEO, Boishakhi Television; and Rohan Samarajiva, Chair and CEO, LIRNEasia.

List of Participants

Aditya Rao, Senior Associate, Amarchand Mangaldas, India
Ahmed Swapan, Executive Director, VOICE, Bangladesh
Amrit Pant, General Secretary, Computer Association of Nepal & President, Information Technology Development Society, Nepal
Anja Kovacs, Project Director, Internet Democracy Project, India
Babu Ram Aryal, President, Internet Society, Nepal Chapter, Nepal
Binaya Guragain, Coordinator of Programs, Equal Access, Nepal
Bishakha Datta, Wikimedia Foundation Board Member & Co-founder, Point of View, India
Chinmayi Arun, Assistant Professor, National Law University Delhi & Fellow, Centre for Internet and Society, India.
Dixie Hawtin, Project Manager for Digital Communications and Freedom of Expression, Global Partners and Associates, UK
Farhana Rumki, Associate Programme Coordinator, VOICE, Bangladesh
Kailash Prasad Neupane, Chief of Legal Section, Spokesperson, Secretary and Registrar, Nepal Telecommunications Authority, Nepal
Khairuzzaman Kamal, Founder Secretary General of Bangladesh Manobadhikar Sangbadik Forum & Senior Reporter at Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha, Bangladesh
Khawaza Mainuddin, Executive Editor, ICE Business Times Magazine, Bangladesh
K S Park, Executive Director, the PSPD Public Interest Law Center & Professor, Korea University Law School, South Korea
Mariyath Mohamed, Journalist, Minivan News, Maldives
Mohammad Nazmuzzaman Bhuian Emon, Associate Professor, Department of Law, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh
Mohammad Shahriar Rahman, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Asia Pacific & Head, Center for IT Security and Privacy, Bangladesh
Moiyen Zalal Chowdhury, Community Manager, Somewhere.In & Norad Fellow,Bangladesh
Monjurul Ahsan Bulbul, Chair, International Press Institute & Editor-in-chief and CEO,Boiskakhi TV, Bangladesh
Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director, Centre for Internet and Society, India
Prasanth Sunganathan, Counsel, Software Freedom Law Centre, India
Rezaur Rahman Lenin, Research Fellow, VOICE, Bangladesh
Richa Kaul Padte, Writer, India
Rohan Samarajiva, Chair and CEO, LIRNEasia, Sri Lanka
Saleem Samad, Columnist & Correspondent at Reporters without Borders, Bangladesh
Salimullah Khan, Writer and Professor, Stamford University, Bangladesh
Sana Saleem, Director, Bolo Bhi, Pakistan
Santosh Sigdel, Advocate and Vice President, Internet Society, Nepal Chapter, Nepal
Shahzad Ahmed, Country Director, Bytes for All, Pakistan
Shehla Rashid Shora, Project Officer, Internet Democracy Project, India
Shehnaz Banu, Media and Communication Officer, Alliance for Social Dialogue, Bangladesh
Soheil Zafar, Editor, Unmochan Blog & TV Producer and Researcher, 71 Television, Bangladesh
Suman Lal Pradhan, CEO, Websurfer, Nepal
Sushma Luthra, Event Coordinator, India
Syeda Fedous Jana, Managing Director and Co-Founder of Somewhere.In, Bangladesh
Tahmina Rahman, Director Bangladesh and South Asia Region, Article 19, Bangladesh
Vasana Wickremasena, Executive Director, Centre for Integrated Communication Research and Advocacy, Sri Lanka

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/third-south-asian-meeting-on-internet-and-freedom-of-expression

Clash of the cyberworlds

praskrishna — 2013-01-15T06:57:48Z

In an increasingly digital world, the issue of Internet freedom and governance has become hugely contested. Censorship and denial of access occur across the political spectrum of nations, even in liberal democracies.

The article by Latha Jishnu, Dinsa Sachan and Moyna was published in Down to Earth magazine's January 15, 2013 issue. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

In run-up to the just-concluded World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai, there was a frenzied campaign to ensure that governments kept their hands off the Internet. It was feared the International Telecommunications Union, a UN body, was aiming to take control of the Internet. That hasn’t happened. But the outcome in Dubai has highlighted once again the double speak on freedom by countries that claim to espouse it and by corporations interested in protecting their interests, says Latha Jishnu, who warns that the major threat to the Internet freedom comes from the wide-ranging surveillance measures that all governments are quietly adopting. Dinsa Sachan speaks to institutions and officials to highlight the primacy of cyber security for nations, while Moyna tracks landmark cases that will have a bearing on how free the Net remains in India.

For months now a little-known UN agency, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), has been looming large in cyberspace, portrayed as an evil force plotting to take over the Internet and threatening to destroy its freedom by rewriting archaic regulations. ITU, set up in 1865, is primarily a technical body that administers a 24-year-old treaty, International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), which are basic principles that govern the technical architecture of the global communication system.

	How did the 193-nation ITU, which regulates radio spectrum, assigns satellite orbits and generally works to improve telecom infrastructure in the developing world, turn into everyone’s favourite monster in the digital world? The provocation was ITU’s World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai, where ITRs were proposed to be revised. Leaked documents of the proposals made to ITU had shown that statist countries like Russia and China, known for their crackdown on Internet freedom, had put forward proposals to regulate digital “crime” and “security” aspects that are currently not regulated at the global level for want of consensus on balancing enforcement with protection of individual rights.

Other proposals were about technical coordination and the setting up of standards that enable all the devices, networks and software across the Internet to communicate and connect with one another. Although ITU secretary general Hamadoun I Touré had emphasised that the Dubai WCIT was primarily attempting to chart “a globally agreed-upon roadmap that offers future connectivity to all, and ensures sufficient communications capacity to cope with the exponential growth in voice, video and data”, there was widespread scepticism among developed countries.

Online subversion in India AT the seventh annual meeting of the Internet Governance Forum in Baku, Azerbaijan, last November, Minister for Communications and Information Technology Kapil Sibal was a star turn. He made an elevating speech about the need to put in place a “collaborative, consultative, inclusive and consensual” system for dealing with policies involving the Internet. India, with 125 million Internet users—a number that “is likely to grow to about half a billion over the next few years”—would be a key player in the cyberworld of tomorrow, he promised. According to the minister, Internet governance was an oxymoron because the concept of governance was for dealing with the physical world and had no relevance in cyberspace. These were high sounding words that crashed against the reality of India’s paranoia over online subversion. For starters, Sibal flew into a media blitz over Google’s transparency Report which ranked India second globally in accessing private details of its citizens. Even if it was a far second behind the US, it was an embarrassing revelation for the government which appears to have been rather enthusiastic in seeking information on the users of its various services. Such user data would include social networking profiles, complete gmail accounts and search terms used. In the first half of 2012, India made 2,319 requests related to 3,467 users compared with 7,969 requests by the US. Globally, Google clocked a total of 20,938 requests for user data. A few days down the line there was a public explosion over the arrest of two young women in Palghar, near Mumbai, for posting a prosaic comment on Facebook over Bal Thackeray’s death. Thanks to the deliberately vague wording of Section 66A of the IT Act, such arrests have become common and Rajya Sabha devoted a whole afternoon to discuss the impugned legislation and seek its withdrawal. Sibal’s response has been to issue guidelines on the use of this Section which civil society organisations say will do nothing to sort out matters. Then there are the IT (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules, 2011, issued under Section 79 of the IT Act, which have been used indiscriminately by business interests to shut down websites, resulting in unbridled censorship of the Internet time and again. Although a motion for its annulment was moved in Parliament by Rajya Sabha member P Rajeeve, it was withdrawn after Sibal promised to talk to all stakeholders. A host of MPs have termed the rules a violation of right to freedom of speech besides going against the laws of natural justice. The promised meeting of stakeholders has not yielded any results and censorship on grounds of possible online piracy continues. In this regard, India is more restrained than the US which has pulled down huge numbers of domains on the ground they were violating intellectual property by selling pirated goods.

Western global powers, behemoth Internet companies, private telecom corporations and almost the entire pack of civil liberties organisations came together in a frenzied campaign to ensure that ITU kept its hands off the Internet. Massive online petitions were launched, backed by Internet companies such as search engine Google and social networking service Facebook. The Internet, they said, should not become an ITU remit because it would change the multi-stakeholder approach, which currently marks the way the Internet is governed, and replace it with government control that would curb digital freedom. Not only did the US administration oppose the revision of ITRs, the US Congress also passed a rare unanimous resolution against the WCIT proposals.

In the end, it was an anti-climax: nothing much came of these proposals. Although WCIT was marked by high drama—a walkout by the US and six European countries, a show of hands on a contested but innocuous resolution and an unexpected vote—the “final acts” (http://www.itu.int/en/wcit-12/Documents/final-acts-wcit-12.pdf) or the changes in ITRs make no mention of the I word. Not once. The 30-page document states at the outset that “these regulations do not address the content-related aspects of telecommunications” —an indirect reference to the Internet.

	Ultimately, it was a triumph of the US-led position even if 89 of the 144 eligible countries signed it. Most of the developed countries refused to sign it. Nor, unexpectedly, did India, and thereby hangs a curious tale. Officials who were privy to the negotiations told Down To Earth that India was all set to sign the new ITRs when its delegation got last-minute instructions from Delhi not to endorse them. “It was unexpected and a let-down for India and our global allies,” confesses an official of the Ministry of Communications & IT. “There was nothing in the final document that we had objections to.” According to the grapevine, Minister for Communications and Information Technology Kapil Sibal was facing pressure from two sides: the US Administration and domestically from civil society, Internet service providers and the private telecom players who had objected to India’s proposals on ITRs. The US is known to be keeping a close eye on what India decides to do on the new treaty which it can still ratify. In the Dubai treaty, the only ITR that does impinge on the Net is (Article 5B) on unsolicited bulk electronic communications or spam. But even here, what it merely states is that member-states should endeavour to take necessary measures to prevent the “propagation of unsolicited bulk electronic communications and minimize its impact on international telecommunication services.”

In many ways, what took place during the hectic days before and during the December 3-14 WCIT was in a broad sense a replay of the Cold War scenario of the good (freedom-loving countries) versus evil (authoritarian or autocratic regimes), although alliance may have shifted in the two blocs. What is clear is that a larger geopolitical fight is playing out with the Internet as disputed terrain. American analysts themselves have pointed out that the “US got most of what it wanted. But then it refused to sign the document and left in a huff.”

Even the innocuous Article 5A, which calls on members “to ensure the security and robustness of international telecommunication networks”, was interpreted by US delegation head Terry Kramer as a means that could be used by some governments to curb free speech!

As an outraged Saudi delegate said, “It is unacceptable that one party to the conference gets everything they want and everybody else must make concessions. And after having made many concessions, we are then asked to suppress the language which was agreed to. I think that that is dangerous. We are on a slippery slope.” The final outcome: all the contentious issues were relegated to resolutions, which have no legal basis.

Indeed, the US has managed to get its way on most issues: protecting the mammoth profits of its Internet companies and ensuring that control of the Internet address system, now done by a group based in the US, will not be shared with other ITU members. And, the likes of Google (2011 profit: $37.9 billion) and Facebook will not have to pay telecom companies for use of their networks to deliver content.

Challenges of securing cyberworld

E-commerce in India, where every tenth person is online, is on the rise—and, consequently, crime on the Internet. In 2011, the country’s nodal agency for handling cyber crime, Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, tackled 13,301 incidences of security breach. The incidents ran the gamut from website intrusions, phishing to network probing and virus attacks. Further, in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 (until October), there were 201, 303, 308 and 294 cyber attacks respectively on sites owned by the Indian government. Most notably, hacker group Anonymous defaced the website of Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Kapil Sibal.

To beef up cyber security, the Union ministry plans to pump in Rs 45 crore in 2012-13. It also put up a draft cyber security policy for public comments in 2011. Currently, cases involving cyber security and crime are handled under the IT Act of 2000 (Amendment 2008) and the Indian Penal Code.

But will the government go about its business of securing the Net in a responsible manner? There is scepticism. Section 69 of the Act gives any government agency the right to “intercept, monitor or decrypt” information online. Chinmayi Arun, assistant professor of law at National Law University in Delhi, said at the Internet Governance Conference held at FICCI in October that crimes like defamation are not on the same page as cyber terrorism, and “we have to question whether they warranty invasion of privacy”. She added that the workings of the surveillance system has to be made more open to build public trust.

Pranesh Prakash, policy director at Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bengaluru, draws attention to a fundamental flaw in the section. “Government is allowed to wire tap under the Telegraph Act, 1885. But the Act lays out specific guidelines for such an action. For example, you can only tap phones in the case of a ‘public emergency’ or ‘public safety’ situation. The IT Act does not put such limitations on interception of information,” he says.

Cyber security and ITU

A few months prior to the controversial World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai, countries, including Russia and Arab states, had proposed measures that would, through International Telecommunication Union (ITU), grant disproportional power to countries to control the Internet in the name of security measures. Several proposals, most notably those of India and Arab States, explicitly stated in the proposed Article 5A that countries should be able to “undertake appropriate measures, individually or in cooperation with other Member States” to tackle issues relating to “confidence and security of telecommunications/ICTs”. It raised alarm among civil society. US-based think tank Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) said in its report dated September, 2012, that cyber security does not fall under the ambit of International Telecom Regulations, and some countries would misuse such privileges for “intrusive or repressive measures”.

The proposal by African member states recommended that nations should “harmonise their laws” on data retention. In other words, intermediaries would have to retain public data for a long period so that governments can access it whenever they please. With regard to this, CDT noted, “Not only do national laws on data retention vary greatly, but there is ongoing controversy about whether governments should impose data retention mandates at all.”

A clause in the Arab proposal on routing said, “A Member State has the right to know how its traffic is routed.” Currently, the way Internet works, senders and recipients do not know how data between their computers travels or is routed. However, enabling countries to have control over routing has its dangers. CDT notes, “(This) would simply not work and could fundamentally disrupt the operation of the Internet.” Internet traffic travels over an IP network. While travelling, it is fragmented into small packets. Packets generally take a different path across interconnected networks in many different countries before reaching the recipient’s computer. CDT notes providing routing information to countries would require “extensive network engineering changes, not only creating huge new costs, but also threatening the performance benefits and network efficiency of the current system”. Although routing was not part of India’s proposal, Ram Narain, deputy director general at the department of telecommunications, told Down To Earth it was one of the country’s concerns.

However, to civil society’s partial relief, such draconian cyber security clauses were not adopted in the new itr treaty. Two clauses added to the treaty, Article 5A and 5B, address some cyber security concerns. Titled “Security and robustness of networks”, Article 5A urges countries to “individually and collectively endeavour to ensure the security and robustness of international telecommunication networks”. Article 5B talks about keeping tabs on spam.

Prasanth Sugathan, senior advocate with Software Freedom Law Centre, an international network of lawyers, says while he would have preferred that the two clauses were kept out of the new treaty, they do not seem harmful. “They are a much toned down version of what Arab states and Russia had suggested,” he says.

This is one reason India, Brazil and other democracies from the developing world also want a change in ITRs. They want the Internet behemoths to pay for access to their markets so that such revenues can be used to build their own Internet infrastructure.

In the furious debate on keeping the Net free of international control even hawk-eyed civil society organisations prefer to ignore the monetary aspects of Net control. Some analysts believe that maintaining the status quo is not so much about protecting the values of the Internet as about safeguarding interests, both monetary and hegemonistic. Such an assessment may not be wide of the mark if one joins the dots. Google, says a Bloomberg report of December 10, “avoided about $2 billion in worldwide income taxes in 2011 by shifting $9.8 billion in revenues into a Bermuda shell company, almost double the total from three years before”. It also said that the French, Italian, British and Australian governments are probing Google’s tax avoidance in its borderless operations.

	What is clear, however, is that a number of countries for reasons springing from different motivations, appear determined to undermine America’s control of the outfits that now define how the Internet works. Although the US maintains that ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is a private, non-profit corporation, it is overseen by the US Commerce Department. According to People’s Daily, what the US spouts about Net freedom is so much humbug. In an August 2012 report, the leading Chinese daily claimed the US “controls and owns all cyberspaces in the world, and other countries can only lease Internet addresses and domain names from the US, leading to American hegemonic monopoly over the world’s Internet”. It also highlighted a fact that has slipped below the radar. During the Iraq invasion, the US government asked ICANN to terminate services to Iraq’s top-level domain name “.iq” and thereafter all websites with the domain name “.iq” disappeared overnight. It charges the US with having “taken advantage of its control over the Internet to launch an invisible war against disobedient countries and to intimidate and threaten other countries”. While this may be true, the irony is that China, with its great firewall of censorship, is in no shape to position itself as a champion of freedom. Like other authoritarian countries, it will do everything to police the Net and control it.

The right of countries and peoples to access the Net was highlighted in Dubai when some African countries raised the issue of US control of the global Internet. Some of these, such as Sudan, have long been complaining about Washington’s sanctions that entail denial of Internet services. ITU officials point out that Resolution 69, first passed in the 2008 meeting, invoked again in 2010 and dusted off once again for the WCIT negotiations, invoked “human rights” to argue for “non-discriminatory access to modern telecom/ ICT facilities, services and applications”. Says Paul Conneally, head of Communications & Partnership Promotion at ITU, “The real target of these resolutions are US sanctions imposed on nations that are deemed bad actors. These sanctions mean that people in those countries—not just the government, mind you, but everyone, innocent and guilty alike—are denied access to Internet services such as Google, Sourceforge, domain name registrars such as GoDaddy, software and services from Oracle, Windows Live Messenger, etc.”

The catalogue of Sudan’s complaints shows at least 27 instances in 2012 when companies from Google to Microsoft and Paypal to Oracle cut off their services to the African country. This might explain why major companies would be opposed to the resolution on a right to access Internet services. Such a right would allow countries to use ITRs to compel them to provide services they might otherwise have preferred not to. But so far all such sanctions appear to have been a decision of the US Administration.

The problem of the digital divide, in fact, did not get the headlines it should have. Africa accounts for just 7 per cent of the 2.4 billion people who use the Net worldwide and penetration in the region is just 15.6 per cent of the population. Compare this with North America where over 78 per cent are linked to the digital world and Touré’s logic about the ITU’s mandate appears reasonable.

When Apple censors the drone war NETIZENS know that the Internet suffers from the depredations of government, hackers and viruses. But not many are aware that companies are as prone to taking legitimate stuff off the Net on the flimsiest grounds. In the case of Apple it could have been misplaced patriotism or plain business sense that prompted it to block an app which monitors drone strike locations in November last year. The App Store rejected the product, calling it “objectionable and crude”. Drones+ (see photo) is an application that simply adds a location to a map every time a drone strike is reported in the media and added to a database maintained by the UK’s Bureau of Investigative Journalism. Josh Begley, a graduate student at New York University, who developed the app, says it shows no visuals of war or classified information. All it does is to keep its users informed about when and where drone attacks are taking place in Pakistan and Afghanistan. “This is behavior I would expect of a company in a repressive country like China, not an iconic American company in the heart of Silicon Valley,” says a petition to the company CEO. Did Apple’s censorship have anything to do with the fact that it received huge contracts from the Pentagon? US legislators have joined the protests against Apple. The most brazen act of corporate censorship occurred in August 2012 with NASA’s livestream coverage of the Curiosity rover’s landing on Mars in the space agency’s $2.5 billion mission. A news agency, Scripps, coolly claimed as its own the public domain video posted on NASA’s official YouTube channel that documented the epic landing (see our opening visuals). “This video contains content from Scripps Local News, who has blocked it on copyright grounds. Sorry about that,” said a message on NASA’s blackened screen. So much for the strict US laws aimed at curbing online piracy!

Touré noted that the revised ITRs would see greater transparency in global roaming charges, lead to “more investment in broadband infrastructure” and help those with disabilities. But he was hopeful that the new treaty signed in Dubai would make it possible for the 4.5 billion people still offline to be connected. “When all these people come online, we hope they will have enough infrastructure and connectivity so that traffic will continue to flow freely,” Touré said.

But should ITU govern the Net? Not in its entirety, according to experts. For one, ITU until the Dubai meeting was far from being transparent and does not allow participation of civil society or other stakeholders in its negotiations unless they are part of the official delegation of the member-states. In fact, even critics of the current system, who think the system is lopsided and hypocritical, believe ITU needs to reform itself and confine to the carrier/infrastructure layer of the Internet. Nor should it get into laying down standards which is done by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the naming and numbering that is managed by ICANN.

But Conneally counters this by asking what would happen if the US decided to deny domain name root zone to Iran because of its bad human rights record. “Suppose it ordered Verisign to remove .IR from the DNS root and make it non-functional. Would we want ICANN/the Internet governance regime to be used as a political/strategic tool to reform Iran? What happens to global interoperability when the core infrastructure gets used in that way?”

Who then should ensure that the Internet is run in a free and open manner? Should it be the Internet Governance Forum (IGF)? But IGF is to be an open consultative forum that cannot by itself govern. It brings in participation for any or all Internet-related policy processes but it by itself was never supposed to do policy or governance.

Parminder Jeet Singh, executive director of ItforChange, says whoever governs is the government for that purpose. “This truism is significant in the present context, because there is an attempt by those who really control/ govern the Internet at present, largely through illegitimate and often surreptitious ways, to confuse issues around Internet governance in all ways possible, including through abuse of established language and political principles and concepts.”

ITforChange is a Bengaluru institution working on information society theory and practice, especially from the standpoint of equity, social justice and gender equality, and it is that perspective which informs Singh’s suggestions. “What we need are safeguards as, for instance, with media regulation. The Internet, of course, is much more than media. It is today one of the most important factors that can and will influence distribution of economic, social and political power. Without regulation it will always be that those who currently dominate it will take away the biggest pie.

Surveillance club

Eight Indian companies are among the 700 members of European Telecommunications Standards Institute. The group works with government and law enforcement agencies to integrate surveillance capabilities into communications infrastructure. It also hosts regular meetings on lawful interception

Wipro Technologies	Associate Service Providers
• HCL Technologies Limited	• Associate Consultancy for Co./Partnership
• Accenture Services Pvt Ltd	• Observers
• CEWiT	• Associate Research Body
• Saankhya Labs Pvt Ltd	• Associate Manufacturers
• Sasken Communication	• Associate Manufacturers
• Technologies
• SmartPlay Technologies	Associate Consultancy for Co./Partnership
• TEJAS NETWORKS LTD	• Associate Manufacturers

Other critics of the current system concede that bringing governments on board, especially authoritarian and statist powers which the digital world threatens, would give them perverse incentives to control it. But this threat should be met not by insisting that the Internet needs no governance or regulation, but by safeguards that ensure equitable access and benefits, Singh stresses.

While the jury is out on the question whether the new ITRs will make any material difference to the way, and if at all, the Net will come under added government oversight and intervention, developments elsewhere show that ITU is not the main threat to digital freedom.

The irony is that while cyber security is contentious in ITU, other international organisations, such as the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and a clutch of influential telecom industry associations, are pushing for surveillance programmes that ensure policing of a high order with sophisticated infrastructure to monitor online communications. A host of countries already have such systems in place and are pressuring countries like India to fall in line.

A UNODC report, titled ‘The use of the Internet for terrorist purposes’, has detailed how countries can and should use new technology for online surveillance—all in the name of anti-terrorism. The report discusses sensitive issues such as blocking websites and using spyware to bypass encryption and also urges countries to cooperate on an agreed framework for data retention.

At the same time, powerful industry bodies, such as ATIS (Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions) and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), are reported to be working with government and law enforcement agencies to integrate surveillance capabilities into communications infrastructure, according to Future Tense, a project which looks at emerging technologies and how these affect society, policy and culture. It says India is under pressure from another industry organisation, the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), “to adopt global standards for surveillance”, calling on the country’s government to create a “centralized monitoring system” and “install state-of-the-art legal intercept equipment”.

TIA is a Washington-based trade group which brings together companies such as Nokia, Siemens Networks and Verizon Wireless, and is focused on issues related to electronic surveillance and is developing standards for intercepting VOIP and data retention alongside with ETSI and ATIS. At least seven Indian companies are members of ETSI, which is said to hold international meetings on data interception thrice a year.

Add to this chilling list the International Chamber of Commerce. It is reported to be seeking the establishment of surveillance centre hubs of several countries to help governments intercept communications and obtain data that is stored in cloud servers in foreign jurisdictions. Given this backdrop why are the US and its cohorts creating a ruckus on ITRs?

It would also mean that by focusing on ITRs and ITU as a major threat to Internet freedom civil society may be jousting at windmills.

Malice and freedom of speech

Two suits highlight the challenge of treading between the two

Among the many legal cases in India related to the use and misuse of the world wide web, two stand out for involving web giants and provoking sharp reaction. These are the cases registered in Delhi district courts in December 2011, objecting to chunks of content—portraying prominent political figures and religious places among others in a certain light—hosted on websites. One was filed by a Delhi journalist, Vinai Rai, requesting the court to press criminal charges against 21 web agencies, including Google, Facebook and Yahoo! India. The other, filed by a social activist, M A A Qasmi, was a civil suit requesting action against 22 web agencies. Both mentioned that the content on the websites was inflammatory, threat to national integrity, unacceptable, and created enmity, hatred and communal discord.

A year on, tangible impact has not been much. The number of accused in the civil case has come down to seven web agencies and in the criminal case the government is yet to issue summons to the companies concerned (see ‘The case so far’). However, these litigations are seen as landmarks in the recent history of the Internet and its interaction with societies and governments. The cases—especially off-the-record comments by the judiciary suggesting blanket ban and pre-screening of all content—provoked a debate on the freedom of expression and Indian cyber laws.

The case so far

JANUARY 13, 2012: Delhi High Court dismisses petition by Google and Facebook asking to be absolved of criminal charges filed in district court

JANUARY 20: High Court asks for reply from Delhi Police in response to plea by Yahoo! India challenging district court summons

FEBRUARY 16: Court refuses to stay proceedings against Facebook and Google but allows them to be represented by counsel

MARCH: Court dismisses criminal charges against Yahoo! India and Microsoft but says the charges can be revived if new evidence comes to light. Sets aside summons

Malicious content exists on the web and may even need to be taken down, but the laws used to remove malicious content can also be used to curb political speech, thus, infringing on the right to freedom of expression, says Prasanth Sugathan, senior advocate with Software Freedom Law Centre, an international network of lawyers.

Some like Pranesh Prakash of non-profit Centre for Internet and Society believe the IT Rules are at odds with the IT Act and give powers for censorship. He explains that the IT Act, 2000, provides for protection of intermediaries; web browsers, social networking sites and websites cannot be held responsible for what a third party publishes on their forums—“similar to the way in which we cannot sue a telephone agency or a post office for someone else making use of these platforms to harass or defame another person”. But the IT rules of 2011 watered down this protection.

Supreme Court advocate and cyber law expert Pavan Duggal explains how. The Act states once a complaint is made against certain content, the web agency hosting it must notify the person who put up the content, verify the content and judge whether it needs to be removed. But the rules state that once the web agency is notified it must remove the content within 36 hours or it could be prosecuted for not acting on the complaint. The rules have gone beyond the Act’s scope, especially vis-a-vis privacy and data protection, leaving no scope for hearing out the accused, he says.

The disjunct between the Act and the rules is being contested in various spheres, including Parliament. But there is a bright side too. Duggal believes the cases have brought pertinent issues, like free speech and privacy concerns, into the public domain. Ramanjeet Chima, policy adviser for Google, says freedom of expression is paramount for Google but the recognition of local sentiments is also being given equal weightage.

Senior advocate Sidharth Luthra, who was representing Facebook in the Delhi High Court, wonders whether the existing Indian laws are in tune with the ever-changing online world. Unwilling to comment on the case, he says the law is limited in its scope, while technology is not. Refusing to comment on the cases, the Google adviser emphasised the need to use the existing provisions of big web agencies to address grievances regarding content.

The Internet “is not the wild wild west”; all content, users and viewers can be traced, Duggal cautions. Since the Internet can impact political issues government is increasingly looking for ways to control it. “There is no ideal solution but it is evident that some monitoring and regulation are required, and in all parts of the world all regimes are in the process of addressing this,” he says.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/down-to-earth-latha-jishnu-dinsa-sachan-moyna-january-15-2013-clash-of-the-cyber-worlds