Centre for Internet and Society

Digital Citizens: Why Cyber Security and Online Privacy are Vital to the Success of Democracy and Freedom of Expression

praskrishna — 2014-01-08T04:59:10Z

Michael Oghia will give a presentation which will show why cyber security and online privacy are vital for democracy and freedom of expression.

In the time when Edward Snowden is fighting for both clemency and to be known as a brave whistle blower that exposed government wrongdoing, cyber security and online privacy have never been more important. As Jacob Applebaum discussed in May last year, and CIS’ Maria Xynou presented recently in December, surveillance throughout the world is increasing. With security apparatus’ likethe NSA and now India’s Central Monitoring System, coupled with corporate data centers around the world storing our e–mails, address books, preferences, and passwords, it is easy to see how our online privacy is increasingly being threatened and often, violated.

Indeed, online privacy is inextricably linked to freedom of expression, and freedom of expression is a fundamental civil liberty imperative to democracy. Moreover, online security and privacy are essential to good, transparent, and accountable democratic governance. This is largely because surveillance, censorship, and monitoring ultimately create environments where self-censorship is the norm, as is the fear of the government instead of spaces that allow for freedom of expression and democratic dialogue and dissent.

What I would like to accomplish my speaking at CIS is not to merely educate about the dangers posed to Internet security or to world democracy, but rather to:

Reiterate the importance of digital privacy and cyber security to the success of democracy and the continued protection of free expression.
Encourage citizens, technology specialists, Internet and privacy advocates, and others to see themselves as part of a larger system of democratic governance and civic participation. This means understanding how technical capabilities intersect with civil society, and then use them to advocate for a more open, accessible, and private cyberspace.
Reinforce that digital media literacy education is vital to ensuring a free, open, accessible, and democratic Internet.

Additionally, I want to present ideas and recommendations for what you can do to engage with these problems, and how we can collaborate together to address them.

About the Public Intelligence Project

The Public Intelligence Project is an independent, non-partisan, not-for-profit think tank conducting research, education, and advocacy on the importance of diversity, critical thinking, dialogue, and freedom of expression. We seek to promote more robust systems of participatory democracy, civic engagement, and conflict prevention in order to create a culture of democracy.

Michael Oghia

Michael is responsible for a new project at Meta-Culture called the Public Intelligence Project, which focuses on expanding participatory democracy, civic engagement, and conflict prevention by conducting research, education, and advocacy on the intersections between diversity, dialogue, critical thinking, and freedom of expression. While new to the conflict resolution field, as a poet, musician, editor, writer, blogger, and activist, he is well-versed in the importance of freedom of expression and participating in the democratic process. He was born in Kentucky to Lebanese-Syrian parents, and after graduating with a BS in sociology from the University of Louisville, he moved to Lebanon to pursue an MA in sociology from the American University of Beirut. There, he had the opportunity to witness the Arab Revolutions first-hand while research about topics such as Internet ownership in the Middle East, social movements, Arab media, globalization, Arab youth and family, and his thesis subject, romantic love in the Arab world. Michael enjoys engaging Twitter conversations, and has an unnatural affinity for crunchy peanut butter.

Date: Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Time: 6.30 p.m. to 8.00 p.m.
Talk by: Michael Oghia
Title: Research & Advocacy Consultant, and Project Manager
Organisation: Meta-Culture / Public Intelligence Project
Websites: www.meta-culture.in <http://www.meta-culture.in> & www.publicintelligenceproject.org <http://www.publicintelligenceproject.org>

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/events/why-cyber-security-and-online-privacy-are-vital-for-success-of-democracy-and-freedom-of-expression

Delhi government in consultation with Centre to block Uber's Internet address

praskrishna — 2015-03-09T02:12:15Z

The Delhi transport department has started consultation with the central government to block the internet address of taxi hailing app Uber if the San Francisco-based startup does not obtain a radio taxi licence to ply its cabs in the national capital.

The article by Harsimran Julka was published in the Economic Times on February 25, 2015. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

Blocking Uber's IP will mean the company's website and mobile phone application will no longer be accessible in India, effectively shutting down operations in a country which the startup estimates is its largest market outside the United States.

Uber has operations across 10 cities in India with over 10,000 cabs registered on its platform."We have initiated a process with the central government to block (Uber's) IP address in India if the company doesn't abide by law," said a senior official in the Delhi transport department.

Uber and other taxi app companies were banned from operating in Delhi after the alleged rape of a passenger by a driver on the Uber network in December 2014. Subsequently, the transport department modified radio taxi laws and directed Uber and rivals OlaCabs and Taxiforsure to obtain licences to operate legally in the city. While Ola has obtained a licence, Uber, which terms itself as a technology company and not a transport provider, has been demanding that it be regulated under the Information Technology Act. "There has to be an end to the matter somewhere," said the official quoted above. The department has given Uber time until February 25 to submit a revised application for a radio taxi licence.

"We are waiting to see if they comply and apply for a licence before issuing a written request (to block the IP address),' said a second official who confirmed that the transport department had already begun discussions with the department of IT. Zubeda Begum, the standing counsel for the Delhi government is likely to submit an affidavit on Wednesday in the Delhi High Court on the method to be adopted to block the IP address.

The court, which is hearing the case of the alleged rape, had raised the issue of banning IP addresses of taxi app companies after the state government complained that the companies continued to ply in the national despite the ban.

"It is the central government which will have to block the website. The Delhi government just has to make a request," Begum told ET.

Pawan Duggal, cyber law expert and a Supreme Court advocate, said that the blocking of websites in India can be done under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act but the rules to get them unblocked are unclear.

"A court order may be needed to get it unblocked," said Duggal.

A spokeswoman for Uber said the company will continue to work with the authorities and is "evaluating the perceived deficiencies in the time period provided to us by the government."

This is not the first time that the website of a foreign company will be banned in India. Last December, about 32 websites including SourceForge, Archive, Vimeo, Dailymotion were banned on grounds of national security. Uber itself has had its IP address blocked in countries such as Spain. Last December, a Madrid Court ordered Spain's telcos to block access to Uber.

"Any state government department can request the designated authority to block a website. The authority has to then forward the request to a committee, which takes the decision," said Pranesh Prakash, at the Centre for Internet and Society in Bengaluru.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-harsimran-julka-february-25-2015-delhi-government-in-consultation-with-centre-to-block-ubers-internet-address

Delhi gang rape: What Facebook, Twitter expose about govt

praskrishna — 2012-12-31T01:02:44Z

When constable Subhash Tomar collapsed during the anti-rape agitation in New Delhi, the government was keen to say he suffered injuries inflicted by the protesters. But the administration's version of events was challenged soon on social media, and the mainstream media latched onto the mystery and started pressurising the government to come clean.

The article was published in the Times of India on December 29, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The Tomar episode, when social media set the agenda and put the government on the back foot, is one more example of rise of people's power online. The political class in India has been shaken by the speed and efficiency with which the recent protests were coordinated. Some of them, like Abhijit Mukherjee, have ended up putting their foot in their mouth while others like Congress' youth icon and heir apparent Rahul Gandhi have not even cared to react.

The reason for Tomar's death is still unclear, but the post-mortem report has attributed it to external injuries.

"Frankly, right now, we haven't figured out how to deal with this phenomenon," said Congress Party Spokesman Sandeep Dikshit.

The anti-corruption movement of Anna Hazare, the Occupy Wall Street movement in the US, and the Arab Spring were all largely organised through social networking sites. Even in neighbouring Pakistan, the raid that killed al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was first reported on microblogging site Twitter, further highlighting social media's growing importance as a source of information. Such is the influence and impact of social media that many are increasingly referring to it as the "fifth pillar of democracy".

Influence bound to grow

India has over 120 million internet users - Twitter has about 16 million and Facebook over 60 million - but this is still just one-tenth of the population.

Also, as 3G penetration increases, data becomes accessible on more feature phones. While about 221 million mobiles were sold in India in 2012, sales are expected to touch 251 million units in 2013, according to technology market researcher Gartner. With so much of growth still left to come, the influence of social media is only bound to grow.

Minister of State for Human Resource Development Shashi Tharoor, one of the early converts to social media and inveterate tweeter, said the social media space is a "parallel universe to the mainstream media" and that stories on these platforms have a "resonance of their own".

"It is a medium that allows big issues to be made out of issues that mainstream media ignores but politicians cannot," he said.

Brand guru Harish Bijoor is of the view that the political class must pay attention to the information revolution as India is a very young country in terms of demographics. "The political class appears a gerontocracy while 54% of the population is below 25 and 70% below 35. There is a disconnect that must be addressed."

Kedar Gavane, director at Internet analytics company ComScore India, said an average Indian Facebook user has about 300 friends. "That's the kind of reach an individual and his messages have on social networks," he said. "Twitter has helped us identify the common man's feelings. For instance, when a candlelight protest is organised, you get to know what the protesters are thinking."

But the real question, he said, is whether people are actually willing to go beyond these platforms. "Whether it can become the Fifth Estate or not is hard to say because at the end of the day, this is just a channel for communication."

With the government struggling for a credible response to the growing influence of social media, it has often resorted to blocking user accounts and web pages. The government, which blocked 663 webpages in 2012, asked Indian Internet service providers to block 16 Twitter accounts, including those of right-wing leaders and journalists.

In the first half of 2012, the government made 2,319 requests for information on 3,467 user accounts of search engine giant Google. Google complied with 64% of these.

While the influence of social media is not lost on those such as Dikshit, he said the problem is "how to break in with an alternative view". "It is like a community of people who think the same way and validate each others' opinions. The number of people who validate your opinion does not make it the right opinion, but that fine distinction is getting lost somewhere."

There are others who feel the role of social media in protests is often exaggerated. "The agency for change resides first in people and only secondarily in platforms," according to Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society.

(With inputs from Joji Thomas Philip in New Delhi)

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-december-29-2012-delhi-gang-rape

Daunting task ahead for investigative agencies with WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption

praskrishna — 2016-04-09T09:45:12Z

Messaging service WhatsApp's decision to roll out end-to-end encryption for over 1 billion subscribers has been hailed as a positive step by users across the world, although things are set to get tougher for law enforcement and investigative agencies in India seeking to track terrorists.

The article by Neha Alawadhi was published in Economic Times on April 8, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

"It was anyway difficult to get any kind of data from WhatsApp and now it is going to be even more difficult," said a person familiar with the working of these agencies who did not wish to be identified.

Encryption scrambles data such as text messages, photos and documents and makes them unintelligible for unintended recipients. A service that is encrypted end-to-end cannot be monitored or intercepted. No one, except the people or group communicating with each other, can access the data. If telecom companies, Internet providers or even companies that run messaging services try to intercept the message, all they would get is garbled data.

While chats will not be accessible, associated information known as metadata will be available, such as when the conversations took place, the identities of senders and recipients, their locations, mobile numbers, profile photos and address books, which may be useful for security agencies.

"Definitely for law enforcement it means a big headache, but the metadata is there and with metadata, if you have a couple of other bits of information, you can piece it together," said Sunil Abraham, executive director at Bengaluru-based research organisation Centre for Internet and Society. "Agencies can get the metadata, but they won't get the payload unless they're able to compromise the device. And that intelligence agencies like NSA (National Security Agency of the US) have been able to do in the past."

While encryption offers privacy and security to users, it is the bane of law enforcement agencies globally, as exemplified most recently and notably by the Apple-FBI dispute in the US. The Federal Bureau of Investigation FBI asked Apple to weaken its encryption to access a dead terrorist's iPhone data and after the company refused, hacked into the device with help from a third party.

In India, it is difficult to bring US-based companies to the negotiating table. "We have had minimum cooperation from WhatsApp. All the data is controlled in the US and they rarely hand over the data that we request. We don't ask them for content. We only ask for metadata," said another person familiar with the process who declined to be identified.

While the Indian IT Act gives wide-ranging powers to the government to ask for access to encrypted information, very few requests for information, very few requests for information take the legal route. One reason is the long time that it takes to process such requests - on average, over three years - and the other, especially in the case of WhatsApp, is little or no cooperation, according to government officials.

WhatsApp, based in Mountain View, California, did not respond to an email request for comment. The messaging company was acquired by Facebook in 2014.

How security and investigative agencies in India use the data they access is also a grey area. "We do not have a privacy legislation here which will take care of the concerns that people have with respect to use of data. If the government needs to have access to communications, they also need to ensure there are adequate safeguards in place," said Prasanth Sugathan, counsel at Software Freedom Law Centre.

"In practice, end-to-end encryption will bring the end user and the device into focus, rather than WhatsApp or any particular messaging service. This should be a trigger for greater clarity on India's data protection policy," said Arun Mohan Sukumar, who heads the cyber security and internet governance initiative at think tank Observer Research Foundation.

In India, requests for information from companies such as WhatsApp and Google are handled by the Ministry of Home Affairs or the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team. Emails to both were unanswered at the time of going to print.

The Indian government was involved in a long-standing dispute with BlackBerry over access to encrypted data on its messenger and corporate email service. BlackBerry set up servers in Mumbai to comply with local regulations, but said it could not access encrypted data on its enterprise servers.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-april-8-2016-neha-alawadhi-daunting-task-ahead-for-investigative-agencies-with-whatsapp-end-to-end-encryption

Data Breach: How will the biggest scandal that Facebook is mired in affect its credibility in India?

Admin — 2018-03-27T02:09:41Z

Facebook has not been able to catch a break lately.

The article by G. Seetharaman and Shephali Bhatt with additional inputs by Indulekha Aravind was published in the Economic Times on March 26, 2018. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

Rebuked for the misinformation spread on its platform by Russian agencies during the 2016 US presidential election, aiding Donald Trump’s victory, Facebook was on the defensive for most of 2017. Making matters worse for the Menlo Park, California-headquartered social media behemoth, another one of its past oversights has now come back to haunt it in what is undoubtedly its biggest public relations challenge.

Reports by the New York Times and the Observer of London on March 17 disclosed that a researcher linked to Cambridge Analytica (CA), a political consulting firm that worked on Trump’s campaign, had accessed details of 50 million Facebook users unbeknownst to them and shared it with CA, which uses online data to reach voters on social media with personalised messages. The reports were based on revelations by whistle-blower Christopher Wylie, who had worked with CA.

This is how it unfolded: in 2014, CA hired Aleksandr Kogan, a Soviet-born American citizen, to mine data on US voters on Facebook, through a personality quiz app. It was downloaded by 2,70,000 users, who logged in with their Facebook credentials. That enabled Kogan to access not just their data on Facebook, but also their friends’ profiles. Facebook says Kogan lied that the data was only for his research, while there was a commercial element to it as CA paid for the app. It is unclear at this point how exactly the data was used or whether it was effective.

In 2015, Facebook removed his app and sought an assurance from him that the data had been destroyed. But it later found out that the information had been passed on to CA. Facebook has since stopped apps from accessing information about a user’s friends and has even limited the data that can be collected about the user.

While the broad details of the issue have been known since 2015, the sheer number of accounts that were compromised was not known till now and has led to calls for Facebook to be deleted, with #DeleteFacebook trending on Twitter. The company, one of the world’s most valuable public companies, has shed $75 billion, or 14% of its market value, since March 16.

As Facebook spends the next few months trying to convince its users that their data is safe, India will be crucial to their plans. India is, after all, its largest market, with 250 million monthly active users, 12% of its global base, according to recent data by We Are Social and Hootsuite, firms involved in social media marketing and management, respectively.

There are other reasons why India is important to Facebook: WhatsApp, the country’s chat app of choice, has 200 million users, again more than any other market, and Instagram has 53 million. Both these apps are owned by Facebook, giving the company an outsize role in how Indians communicate.

Facebook will only grow as smartphone and internet adoption grows — India is set to add 100 million internet users and 250 million smartphone users by 2020. But at the same time, it has to deal with those wondering whether they should sign up or continue being on the network.

Soumya Sinha, a 32-year-old data consultant in Delhi, says FB is quite passive-aggressive when it comes to data. “It gives you a lot of privacy options, makes you feel you are in control of your wall, but buries an ‘unless you don’t want to share’ option at the bottom,” he says. “If you don’t opt out, it assumes you are happy to share. Even if you do, you can never be sure the non-consensual sharing has stopped.”

Privacy controls — not just on Facebook but on social media platforms in general — are not easy to find and even the most tech-savvy have a hard time ensuring the accounts are as secure as they can possibly be. “Indians are very liberal with others accessing their data. A lot of other accounts are linked to my FB account. Who knows which one of them will provide my data to others?” says Prateek Kharangar, a 30-year-old doctor in Rajasthan.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s billionaire chief executive, issued a statement on March 21 admitting that Facebook had made mistakes. He added that Facebook would do a thorough audit of suspicious apps and make its privacy policy stricter by limiting the user information it shares with third-party apps.

Facebook will also revoke permission to apps that a user has not accessed for three months and show an option at the top of the news feed, allowing users to do the same. Zuckerberg also said in a subsequent interview to the New York Times that Facebook would let concerned users know about the CA debacle. Questions sent by ET Magazine to Facebook India went unanswered. The US Federal Trade Commission and the European Union are also scrutinising the issue.

Protect Data
Facebook has faced criticism in the past, including about its facial recognition software In India, it was badly bruised in its fight against net neutrality. Its Free Basics campaign tried to push free access to a few websites, including its own, in partnership with telcos, but the telecom regulator in February 2016 ruled in favour of net neutrality. Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society, believes sites like Facebook should periodically inform users about the data the apps have access to. “Facebook should also ask you every quarter if you want to revoke permission. It’s required in countries where users are naive, unaware and incapable of protecting their own interests.”

Many experts call for more transparency and clarity. Nayantara Ranganathan, programme manager at the Internet Democracy Project, says privacy policies are tweaked constantly and the changes the companies want us to know about are conveyed through blog posts and such, while there may be changes that we may not be aware of. Nikhil Pahwa, cofounder, Internet Freedom Foundation, says the process of notifying users of changes in terms and conditions needs to be improved. “So often, T&Cs are changed and the company just sends a generic mail to all its users. If they don’t respond, it is assumed they have agreed to the changes. That needs to change.” Some believe online consent agreements are being simplified.

While there have been calls for the privacy notice to be in local languages too, Rama Vedashree, CEO of Data Security Council of India, says that in markets like India, where millions are just being introduced to the internet, websites may have to look at pictorial representations to explain how user data will be used by third-party developers. Regardless of how intelligible tech companies make their privacy policy documents, given the number of websites we use, it is impossible to read every site’s terms. That is where a stringent law becomes necessary. “We don’t have a robust legal framework that acts swiftly, permits class action lawsuits and awards damages in tune with the harm incurred,” says Mishi Choudhary, legal director at the Software Freedom Law Center.

WHY FB CAN'T TAKE DATA SECURITY LIGHTLY IN INDIA

Source: Facebook, WhatsApp, We Are Social and Hootsuite, Ministry of Communications, Internet and Mobile Association of India

Abraham says presently only data security is covered under the Information Technology Act, 2000. “A mere infringement of your privacy without financial loss does not allow you to seek remedy.” However, India could have a data protection law sooner than later. A committee was appointed by the government last year to come up with a draft law, an important part of which will be a data protection authority. The Supreme Court, in a landmark ruling last year in a case related to Aadhaar, said privacy is a fundamental right.

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which will come into effect in May, could be emulated in countries, including India. It makes tech companies more accountable for the privacy of those who use their services and has penalties up to £20 million, or 4% of the errant company’s global annual revenues, whichever is higher. This forced Facebook to put all of its privacy settings in one place in January.

“India must go further than Europe did with its General Data Protection Regulation, which requires companies to get unambiguous consent from users to collect data, to clearly disclose how personal data are being used, and to spell out why data is being collected. It must also ban any form of political advertising and the sale of data to third parties,” wrote Vivek Wadhwa, a tech entrepreneur and academic, in a column in ET on Friday.

In light of this controversy, there will be pressure on the government to hasten the process of introducing a data protection law, accompanied by a regulator. It is likely the draft document will draw on the European regulation. “The more we adopt from EU GDPR, the better,” says Pahwa, adding that users should also have the right to removal of personal data.

Ravi Shankar Prasad, India’s IT and law minister, has warned Facebook of stringent action if it is found influencing elections “through undesirable means”. The Indian government on Friday issued a notice to Cambridge Analytica asking if any entities engaged its services to harvest data of Indian Facebook users.

India could also take a leaf out of Germany’s playbook while enforcing data protection, especially if it involves tech companies that dominate the segment they operate in, like Google in search and Facebook in social media. Germany’s competition watchdog in December accused Facebook of abusing its dominant position to get users’ consent to access their data from third-party websites. The Competition Commission of India in February imposed a penalty of `136 crore on Google for abusing its dominant position in search to create a bias to favour its own services.

Messing Up Elections?
The ongoing controversy has been exacerbated by the fact that besides data privacy, electoral politics is at the centre of the issue. CA dug itself into a deeper hole when footage emerged of a UK television channel’s sting operation, in which the company’s top officials talk about using bribes and women to entrap their clients’ political opponents. CA has since suspended its chief executive, Alexander Nix, who was in the video. CA is partly funded by conservative US billionaire Robert Mercer, and Trump’s former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon served on its board.

The issue has had political ramifications in India, with both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and opposition Congress trading charges about each other’s association with CA. The BJP has attacked the Congress by quoting news reports of talks between CA and the Congress ahead of the 2019 general election, while the Congress has hit back with a reference to the 2010 Bihar election on the CA website. The company claims that it worked on the Bihar election, reportedly through its parent Strategic Communication Laboratories, by identifying swing voters.

“Our client achieved a landslide victory, with over 90% of total seats targeted by CA being won,” says the website. The JD(U)-BJP combine was the victorious coalition. Interestingly, the company’s India partner, Ovleno Business Intelligence, is run by Amrish Tyagi, son of JD(U) leader KC Tyagi. When contacted by ET Magazine, Amrish Tyagi declined to comment. Both the Congress and the BJP have denied any ties to CA.

“We have been on social media as long as social media was around and we have always been ethical in our conduct,” says Amit Malviya, head of BJP’s IT Cell. Divya Spandana, who heads the social media team for the Congress, says the party does not engage external agencies. “We only use data with the consent of the individual, emails are subscribed to and WhatsApp is through people who have signed up to receive messages.” The BJP made good use of social media in its 2014 campaign, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and most of his cabinet are quite active on Twitter.

Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp will play an even bigger role in the upcoming assembly polls and the 2019 general election, WhatsApp perhaps more so than the other two, given its popularity and user engagement. “What makes WhatsApp worse than Facebook is Facebook knows what’s being sent around (on its platform). If it comes up with a fake news mitigation strategy, it might work. WhatsApp doesn’t know what’s being sent on its platform,” says Abraham.

In his New York Times interview, Zuckerberg said that after the US presidential election, Facebook developed artificial intelligence tools to identify fake accounts and fake news, which were deployed during the French presidential polls in 2017. “This is a massive focus for us to make sure we’re dialed in for not only the 2018 elections in the US, but the Indian elections, the Brazilian elections, and a number of other elections that are going on this year that are really important,” he was quoted as saying. Both government authorities and the Election Commission of India will keep a close watch on how social media is used in poll campaigns.

While things do not look up for Facebook in the immediate future, some think it will get past the issue. Vineet Sehgal, chief marketing officer of Quikr, says while marketers will take a hard look at Facebook, the company will act swiftly to change its policies.

"There is too much at stake." More and more Indians are using social media, in addition to searching for information on the internet, buying things on ecommerce sites, booking app-based cabs, and making payments and transfers on online payment platforms. They will also buy more devices, including wearables and smart speakers, which gather large amounts of data. So naturally, it is imperative that the sanctity of that data become a top priority for tech companies, consumers and the government. "The emphasis of any (data protection) law needs to be protecting people, not data. Our legislators should ask about relationships of all entities with social media and data analytics companies," says Choudhary of Software Freedom Law Center.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/economic-times-g-seetharaman-shephali-bhatt-march-25-2018-data-breach-how-will-the-biggest-scandal-that-facebook-is-mired-in-affect-its-credibility-in-india

Cyber crimes shoot up 52% in India over last year

praskrishna — 2014-07-03T10:14:26Z

There has been a sharp increase in the incidence of cyber crime in the country. The number of cases registered in 2013 under the IT Act has gone up by 52 per cent to 4,192 as against 2,761 in the previous year.

The article by K.V.Kurmanath was published in the Hindu Businessline on July 2, 2014. Bhairav Acharya gave his inputs.

If you add the cases registered under the IPC, the total number of cyber crime cases crosses the 5,500-mark. Police across the country arrested 3,301 persons in connection with these cases.

Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh (undivided) have topped the list with 681 and 635 cases respectively under the IT Act, both showing an almost 50 per cent growth in cyber crimes over the previous year. In the previous year, Maharashtra had registered 471 and Andhra Pradesh 429.

Cyber security experts have been cautioning people to be careful while using the Internet. Besides increasing the security of the networks they are using, users must be careful while engaging with strangers.

A recent Microsoft report said many customer infections involve users tricked to install secondary offers, indicating a shift in malware proliferation. According to the latest data provided by the National Crime Records Bureau, the official chronicler of crime in the country, cyber crime registered under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) has shown a much higher growth rate of 122 per cent in 2013 over the previous year’s figure. IPC cases went up to 1,316 in 2013 from 595 in the previous year. Maharashtra topped the list here too with the cops booking 226 cases in this category.

Wrong nomenclature?

Bhairav Acharya of the Centre for Internet and Society feels that the term cyber crime has not been defined well. “It is time we do away with the practice of calling any crime a ‘cyber crime’ just because the person who does it uses a computer,” he said.

“Instead, I think the term ‘cyber crime’ should only be used in relation to offences that can only be committed by using information and communications technology (ICT) such as the internet (which is comprised of the world wide web, email protocols, file transfer protocols, and more) as well as network infrastructure that is not the internet,” he said.

Hence, only if there is a direct causal link between the crime and ICT and network technology should a crime be called a cyber crime, Acharya says.

Other States with a high number of cases booked under the IT Act include Karnataka (513), Kerala (349), Madhya Pradesh (282) and Rajasthan (239). Gujarat showed a decline with the number coming down to 61 from 68 in the previous year.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-business-line-july-2-2014-kv-kurmanath-cyber-crimes-shoot-up-in-india-over-last-year

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

CIS’ Comments to the Christchurch Call

Tanaya Rajwade, Elonnai Hickok, and Raouf Kundil Peedikayil — 2019-11-04T14:13:13Z

In the wake of the Christchurch terror attacks, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, and the President of France, Emmanuel Macron co-chaired the Christchurch Call to Action in May 2018 to “bring together countries and tech companies in an attempt to bring to an end the ability to use social media to organise and promote terrorism and violent extremism.”

Fifty one supporters, including India, and eight tech companies have jointly agreed to a set of non-binding commitments and ongoing collaboration to eliminate violent and extremist content online. Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, Google, and Amazon are all among the online service provider signatories that released a joint statement welcoming the call and committing to a nine-point action plan.

The Call has been hailed by many as a step in the right direction, as it represents the first collaboration between governments and the private sector companies to combat the problem of extremist content online at this scale. However, the vagueness of the commitments outlined in the Call and some of the proposed mechanisms have raised concerns about the potential abuse of human rights by both governments and tech companies.

This response is divided into two parts - Part One examines the call through the lens of human rights, and Part Two thinks through the ways in which India can adhere to the commitments in the Call, and compares the current legal framework in India with the commitments outlined in the Call.

Click to read the comments here. The comments were prepared by Tanaya Rajwade, Elonnai Hickok, and Raouf Kundil Peedikayil and edited by Gurshabad Grover and Amber Sinha.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/tanaya-rajwade-elonnai-hickok-and-raouf-kundil-peedikayil-october-31-2019-comments-to-christchurch-call

Chidambaram to Talk Budget on Google+ Hangout

praskrishna — 2013-03-11T04:14:29Z

Indian politicians are slowly warming up to social media.

This article by Dhanya Ann Thoppil was published in the Wall Street Journal on March 4, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

In a first for a cabinet minister, Indian Finance Minister P. Chidambaram tonight is hosting a Google+ Hangout, a Web video chat, to answer citizens’ questions on the budget he presented last week.

At 8 p.m. on Monday India time, Mr. Chidambaram will be joined by a group of experts to discuss the state of India’s economy, which looks set to grow at its weakest pace in a decade this financial year.

On the panel are also Amit Singhal, senior vice president at Google Inc., Anand Mahindra, chairman and managing director of Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., Jahangir Aziz, chief economist for India at J.P. Morgan and Manish Chokhani, chief executive officer at Axis capital.

The online chat, which the Ministry of Finance in a statement described as “a powerful communication platform,” is an attempt to engage India’s tech-savvy, middle-class youth in the political process.

“It is an attempt by the government to reach out to gen-next,” ahead of the general elections scheduled in 2014, said S. Chandrasekharan, the director of South Asia Analysis Group, a Delhi-based think tank.

Improving opportunities for the country’s younger generations was a major focus of Mr. Chidambaram’s budget speech to lawmakers Thursday. “My budget has before it one overarching goal: to create opportunities for our youth to acquire education and skills that will get them decent jobs or self-employment,” he said, adding, “Their concern are my concerns, too.”

But Mr. Chidambaram won’t be interacting with citizens directly. He will answer questions submitted by citizens in advance through video uploads on this YouTube channel or on this Google + page. The session will be streamed live on both websites.

Social media is only beginning to emerge as a tool Indian politicians use to reach out to the country’s citizens.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, often criticized for not being accessible to the media, set up a Twitter profile about a year ago. But the account is managed by his office staff, not by Mr. Singh himself, and it’s mostly used to share links to pictures or speeches of the Prime Minister.

Narendra Modi, chief minister of the state of Gujarat and possible prime ministerial candidate for the opposition Bhartiya Janata Party, has embraced digital media more than other politicians. In August he hosted a Google + Hangout session to answer questions from citizens and in December had a holographic image of himself projected live at rallies in four different locations to communicate with his supporters during his election campaign.

The government last year also came up with a series of guidelines for its various arms on the effective use of social media to reach out to people and to ensure public participation in policy framing.

Still, the government often views social media with suspicion, and has taken steps to regulate user-generated content on websites more tightly.

There are 14 million broadband connections in India, meaning that only a small portion of the country’s 1.2 billion population has reliable Internet access, says Sunil Abraham, executive director at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society.

“So, unlike in the U.S., where you can fault the government for not being online, in India you can’t really fault the government,” says Mr. Abraham.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/wsj-march-4-2013-dhanya-ann-thoppil-chidambaram-to-talk-budget-on-google-hangout

Centre draws red lines for Whatsapp over fake news, says must comply with Indian laws

Admin — 2018-08-27T14:24:51Z

In a meeting with WhatsApp’s CEO Chris Daniels, Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said India put forward several demands, including that the company must have a grievance officer in India and have proper compliance of Indian laws.

The article by Nakul Sridhar was published in the Hindustan Times on August 21, 2018.

The Union government on Tuesday told the Facebook-owned WhatsApp to comply with Indian law, set up an Indian entity, and appoint a grievance officer in India to who people can reach immediately.

The directive comes at a when the government has pulled up the company for fake news spread on the social media platform serving as a contributory factor in several incidents of mob lynching across the country.

Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, conveyed this to the global head of WhatsApp, Chris Daniels, who is in India this week. This is the first time that the government has spelt out its key expectations from the platform.

“I told him there have been sinister developments like fake news and revenge porn, which are criminal and against Indian laws. I suggested three points: they must have a grievance officer in India; they must comply with Indian laws; and they must have a local, corporate entity in India,” Prasad said.

Daniels, he added, had agreed to the three conditions. WhatsApp did not offer an independent confirmation or respond to questions.

Prasad said he also told Daniels that WhatsApp would have to comply with Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines to start its payments services in India, saying that the firm would have to store the financial data it collects from India within the country.

After at least 30 lynchings in the past one year were linked to rumours and fake news spread through the WhatsApp platform, the IT ministry sent two notices to the company last month, asking it to curb the spread of such messages. WhatsApp’s chief operating officer, Matthew Idema, had met the IT ministry secretary Ajay Sawhneytowards the end of July to discuss the issue of fake news with the ministry and explain the steps it was taking in curbing its spread.

The application made it more difficult to forward media by removing shortcuts, limited the number of people a forwarded message can be sent to at a time to five, and introduced a ‘forwarded’ label for such messages after the push from the government.

Explaining its broad approach, a top government functionary, who asked not to be named, said, “We cannot accept digital imperialism. India is an open society. We have embraced technology and innovation. But no one should think they can come and do as they like. Firms like WhatsApp must conform to our rules, laws, and address problems.”

Reiterating his demand that WhatApp must find “a technological solution” to trace the origin of rumour-mongering messages, Prasad said, “It does not need rocket science to locate a message being circulated thousands and lakhs of times on the same day, on the same issue, in the same district and same state.” He said Daniels agreed to comply.

But experts believe that delivering on these demands will be challenging. “WhatsApp, according to my understanding, does not store metadata (such as phone number sent from) for text messages that are transmitted using their application or via the web client. Unfortunately, WhatsApp does not make this explicit in their public documentation,” said Sunil Abraham, founder of the think tank, Centre for Internet and Society.

“Therefore, many governments erroneously believe that sources of specific messages can be determined by big data analysis similar to the analysis of SMS metadata from telecom operators,” he said.

Metadata includes information such as the sender and recipient, date and time. “Now it would also include whether the message is forwarded,” said Abraham.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindustan-times-august-21-2018-centre-draws-red-lines-for-whatsapp-over-fake-news-says-must-comply-with-indian-laws

Centre blocks 32 websites for security reasons, restores some later

praskrishna — 2015-01-02T14:13:03Z

The Centre on Wednesday asked Internet Service Providers (ISP) to block 32 websites citing national security concerns, especially from terror group ISIS.

The article by S. Ronendra Singh was published in the Hindu Businessline on December 31, 2014. Pranesh Prakash gave his inputs.

The move created a flutter on social networking sites, as most of the Web sites, such as archive.org, vimeo.com, github.com, pastebin.com, codepad.org and paste2.org, were being used by global communities like application developers for free movies and books, coders and text sharing.

By late evening, some sites were restored.

Sources in the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology confirmed the development and told BusinessLine: “It was based on some national security issues, and we cannot compromise with our nation’s security….”

A senior official from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) said the directive had come from a Mumbai court after the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) had approached it to block some Web sites carrying anti-India content.

The matter came to light after a circular, purportedly sent by DoT to ISPs, showed up on social networking sites, listing the sites, along with some screen shots. Incidentally, the said circular had edited out the letter head, date and the signature below. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s IT cell head, Arvind Gupta, tweeted saying ‘the Web sites that have been blocked were based on an advisory by the Anti-Terrorism Squad, and were carrying anti-India content from ISIS’.

However, later in the evening, Gupta, in his tweet said, some of the Web sites such as vimeo.com have been restored because they have removed ‘objectionable content and/or cooperated with the on going investigations’.

However, the blocked Web sites raised a furore in the social media wherein people said the Government should amend the laws than do such things.

“The problem isn’t just about the specific sites that are blocked; the problem is always about the bad law + process relating to #GoIBlocks,” Pranesh Prakash, Policy Director at Centre for Internet and Society tweeted. He said the 69A Rules (of the IT Act 2000) does not allow for transparency, accountability and time-limits on blocks, so it is easily misused by the Government, the courts and individuals.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/the-hindu-businessline-december-31-2015-s-ronendra-singh-

Caught in a filter bubble

praskrishna — 2016-11-24T01:45:35Z

The country seems to be polarised over demonetisation and its after-effects. And more likely than not, you’ve had plenty of news stories to read that corroborate what you believe, regardless of whether you think the scrapping of the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes was an ingenious plan or not, especially if you get most of your news on social media.

The article by Chetana Divya Vasudev was published by Deccan Herald on November 22, 2016. Rohini Lakshané was quoted.

However, does the news you’re consuming give you a clear picture of everything going on around you or is it merely helping you live in your own bubble? This has become a hot topic of discussions post the US Presidential elections, with Facebook also coming under fire for it.

Social media sites in particular and the internet in general have been serving people stories that put forth points of view they largely agree with. “This is a phenomenon called the social media filter bubble,” says Rohini Lakshane, programme officer, Centre for Internet and Society. This means that because most people in your network think like you, what you read mostly concurs with your opinions, reinforces your bias, reducing your chances of coming across opposing viewpoints, she explains. “It’s all-pervasive, Twitter also tailors your feeds and the ‘while you were away’ section, unless you uncheck it in your settings,” she says. Using incognito mode for Google searches and clearing cookies are a couple of other steps you could take to check this filter bubble, she adds.

“As someone into policy research, I can’t let my personal prejudices affect what I read or understand,” she offers. “So I also ensure I constantly interact with people from different walks of life.” Keeping an open mind to multiple perspectives could help people remain more informed, she suggests.

Entrepreneur Devashish Mamgain says he makes a conscious effort to search for stories he knows he wouldn’t agree with. “I do this because I’m already up to date with what I like or support, and I think it’s important to know the other side as well,” he says. He doesn’t rely on social media for his news but knows many who do and thinks it limits their knowledge.

Savitha A Isaac, a content writer, says she unsubscribes to newsfeeds on Facebook she doesn’t want to read. “I get annoyed when it shows up what’s trending — videos and memes that are going viral. I feel most of this is US-centric; almost like it’s telling us we have to care about what’s happening there. My husband and I have noticed that Google keeps tabs on what you’re searching for and comes up with suggestions,” she says. This is also true of Facebook.

“I usually read a lot of investigative and feminist stories from certain sites. And when such links pop up as suggestions on your wall — or is reflected in the adds you see — it feels really nice. But it also feels wrong,” she says. “It’s creepy, almost as if someone’s stalking you.”

Uroosa Ayman Fathima, her colleague, believes most content on social media is not accurate. “I only click on a link if it’s that of a news website I trust to be at least 80 per cent accurate,” she says. And she verifies what catches her interest with news in the print media, a more credible source, she believes.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/deccan-herald-november-22-2016-chetana-divya-vasudev-caught-in-a-filter-bubble

Cambridge Analytica scandal: How India can save democracy from Facebook

sunil — 2018-03-28T15:44:00Z

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

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

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

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

Collect data only if mandated by regulation

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

Consent must be explicit, informed and voluntary

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

There must be a right to explanation

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

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

How to fix the business model?

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

The Google challenge

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

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

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

Brazil’s experience a red flag for WhatsApp in Indian polls, say experts

Admin — 2018-10-28T06:06:19Z

Data shows that the share of active WhatsApp users in rural India has doubled since 2017, according to a survey by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.

The article by Vidhi Choudhary was published in Hindustan Times on October 21, 2018. Sunil Abraham was quoted.

Instant messaging service WhatsApp will have to put more safeguards in place to avoid its misuse in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections,experts say. Some point to the experience in the recent elections in Brazil,where the Facebook-owned platform battled allegations on its use to influence the popular vote, with mass-WhatsApp messages pushing anti-leftist propaganda.

“There is no easy way to say this but the likelihood of a WhatsApp scandal in the run-up to the 2019 elections in India is imminent. I won’t be surprised if there is already something similar taking place in India. That’s because there is no way to control the message that is being shared on the platform. The only way to stop this is by revoking the end-to-end encryption which will impair the privacy WhatsApp users enjoy,” said lawyer Rahul Matthan, partner at the law firm Trilegal and author of Privacy 2.0, which traces the historic origin and current debates on privacy.

WhatsApp has over 200 million users in India, its largest market. The absence of a data protection law in India (one is in the works but is unlikely to be passed before the elections) only adds to this problem, although this transcends WhatsApp.

“The large scale sale of phone numbers, and subsequent bombardment of messages, without seeking consent is also a reminder that we urgently need rules to limit the use of personal data for political campaigns. Europe’s law, the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation), for example, puts strict limits on direct marketing, including by political parties and campaigners. Yet India is approaching its own elections without any effective data protection rules in place,” said Amba Kak, public policy adviser at web browser Mozilla.

The election commission is aware of the challenge. In an interview to Hindustan Times, chief election commissioner OP Rawat said the biggest challenge for the ECI right now is posed by technology firms that have wherewithal to influence voters.

According to a survey conducted by the Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) and reported by the HT earlier this week, 40% of rural users of the messaging platform were part of WhatsApp groups created by members or representatives of political parties. A third of the users spend between one hour and four hours on the app daily, the survey found. “This reflects the level of campaigning and penetration of political parties. Villages are always politically sensitive and also interested in politics,” the HT report said, quoting DEF’s Osama Manzar.

The survey noted that 63% of the respondents were not on the service in 2014. The share of active WhatsApp users in rural India has doubled since 2017, according to the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.

A possible solution is to make sure voters are consistently informed about the issue of misinformation and fake news in India, added Matthan. “WhatsApp should continue to build a concerted marketing campaign against fake news to make voters aware, so that they exercise restraint while sending and sharing messages received from other users. The only trouble is if the message is received from a trusted ally, then one is likely to believe it. That’s why there is no absolute way to ensure shadow campaigns are not circulated on WhatsApp,” he explained.

The Facebook-owned platform has said in an earlier statements that it believes this is a challenge that requires government, civil society and technology companies to work together. “Our strategy has been twofold. First, to give people the controls and information they need to stay safe; and second, to work proactively to prevent misuse on WhatsApp,” WhatsApp said in the statement in July.

In July, WhatsApp launched a label to identify forwarded messages in a bid to combat fake news and the spread of misinformation globally, including India. It later set a limit to the use of forwarded messages to five chats in India. After that WhatsApp took out full-page advertisements in Indian newspapers offering “easy tips” to distinguish between fact and fiction as it battles rising pressure to curb the spread of misinformation in India after the lynching of at least 30 people in the country since May, with at least some being caused by rumours forwarded over phones.

Sunil Abraham, director at the think tank Centre for Internet and Society said WhatsApp could employ a network of fact checkers and explore “in application education”.

Local authorities in various parts of the country have resorted to Internet shutdowns to counter incidents of violence triggered by rumours on WhatsApp. Law firm Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), based in New Delhi, has tracked down 116 Internet shutdowns across India in 2018 alone. In 2017, India reported 79 shutdowns; in 2016, the number was 31 and in 2012 it was just three. The rise from three shutdowns in 2012 to more than 100 this year marks a 3,766% surge. “State and central government and local authorities might consider this a solution. But a shutdown is completely against freedom of speech and that’s our view,” said an SFLC spokesperson. WhatsApp users in rural India do not blindly trust messages they receive on the messaging service, according to the DEF survey.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/hindustan-times-vidhi-choudhary-october-21-2018-brazil-s-experience-a-red-flag-for-whatsapp-in-indian-polls-say-experts

Beyond Public Squares, Dumb Conduits, and Gatekeepers: The Need for a New Legal Metaphor for Social Media

amber — 2021-05-31T10:23:36Z

In the past few years, social networking sites have come to play a central role in intermediating the public’s access to and deliberation of information critical to a thriving democracy. In stark contrast to early utopian visions which imagined that the internet would create a more informed public, facilitate citizen-led engagement, and democratize media, what we see now is the growing association of social media platforms with political polarization and the entrenchment of racism, homophobia, and xenophobia.

There is a dire need to think of regulatory strategies that look beyond the ‘dumb conduit’ metaphors that justify safe harbor protection to social networking sites. Alongside, it is also important to critically analyze the outcomes of regulatory steps such that they do not adversely impact free speech and privacy. By surveying the potential analogies of company towns, common carriers, and editorial functions, this essay provides a blueprint for how we may envision differentiated intermediary liability rules to govern social networking sites in a responsive manner.

Introduction

Only months after Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory — a feat mired in controversy over alleged Russian interference using social media, specifically Facebook — Mark Zuckerberg remarked that his company has grown to serve a role more akin to government, rather than a corporation. Zuckerberg argued that Facebook was responsible for creating guidelines and rules that governed the exchange of ideas of over two billion people online. Another way to look at the same argument is to acknowledge that, today, a quarter of the world’s population (and of India) are subject to the laws of Facebook’s terms and conditions and privacy policies, and public discourse around the globe is shaped within the constraints and conditions they create. Social media platforms, like Facebook, wield hitherto unimaginable power to catalyze public opinions, causing a particular narrative to gather steam — that Big Tech can pose an existential threat to democracy.

This, of course, is in absolute contrast to the early utopian visions which imagined that the internet would create a more informed public, facilitate citizen-led engagement, and democratize media. Instead, what we see now is the growing association of social media platforms with political polarization and the entrenchment of racism, homophobia, and xenophobia. The regulation of social networking sites has emerged as one of the most important and complex policy problems of this time. In this essay, I will explore the inefficacy of the existing regulatory framework, and provide a blueprint for how to think of appropriate regulatory metaphors to revisit it.

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For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/it-for-change-amber-sinha-beyond-public-squares-dumb-conduits-and-gatekeepers