Centre for Internet and Society

We Truly are the Product being Sold

vidushi — 2016-09-01T02:08:37Z

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We the goondas

praskrishna — 2014-08-04T15:06:18Z

You can now be arrested in Karnataka even before you commit an offence under the IT Act. You could be in jail under the Goonda Act even if not guilty under the Indian Copyright Act. If govt thinks you are planning to send a 'lascivious' photo to a WhatsApp group, or forwarding a copyrighted song, you can be arrested.

The article by Shyam Prasad was published in the Bangalore Mirror on August 4, 2014. Sunil Abraham gave his inputs.

Have a smartphone? Run for cover. Bizarre as this might sound, the cops are going to come after you if you so much as forward a song to a friend. Forget actually doing it, any plans to do so could land you in serious trouble too. You could be labelled a 'goonda' in the eyes of the State and find yourself behind bars.

In a completely unfathomable move, Karnataka has brought most offences under the Information Technology Act, 2000, and Indian Copyright Act, 1957, under the ambit of the Goonda Act. Until now, people with a history of offences like bootlegging, drug offences and immoral trafficking could be taken into preventive custody. But the government, in its enthusiasm, while adding acid attackers and sexual predators to the law, has also added 'digital offenders'. While it was thought to be against audio and video pirates, Bangalore Mirror has found it could be directed at all those who frequent FB, Twitter and the online world, posting casual comments and reactions to events unfolding around them.

So if you are planning a digital 'offence' — which could be an innocuous opinion like the young girls' in Mumbai after the bandh declared on Bal Thackeray's death — that could attract the provisions of the Information Technology Act. You can even be taken into preventive custody like a 'goonda'. Even those given exceptions under the Indian Copyright Act can find themselves in jail for a year without being presented before a magistrate. Technically, if you are even planning to forward 'lascivious' memes and images to a WhatsApp group or forwarding a song or 'copyrighted' PDF book, you can be punished under the Goondas Act.

The law-makers clearly did not dwell much on the implications while bringing the majority of the populace within the ambit of this law. On July 28, the Karnataka Legislature passed (it took barely a minute from tabling to voice vote), 'The Karnataka Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Bootleggers, Drug-offenders, Gamblers, Goondas, Immoral Traffic Offenders, Slum-grabbers and Video or Audio Pirates, (Amendment) Bill, 2014'. The amendment adds, "Acid attackers, Depradator of Environment, Digital Offenders, Money Launderers and Sexual Predators", to the title. In common parlance, this law is known as the 'Goonda Act'.

The move has come as a shock to the legal community which has slammed it, terming it an attempt by the state to usurp central powers. The government had earlier included 'piracy' under the Goonda Act. But it was applicable only to those pirating film DVDs. Now, this will include books, film songs, music, software or anything big corporates and multinationals claim they have copyright on.

Sunil Abraham, executive director, Centre for Internet and Society, is left in no doubt that the new law is "a terrible thing". "It is a sad development. It is not just bringing the provisions of the IT Act, but also the Copyright Act, that will hurt the common man," he said.

'Digital Offenders' means "any person who knowingly or deliberately violates, for commercial purposes, any copyright law in relation to any book, music, film, software, artistic or scientific work and also includes any person who illegally enters through the identity of another user and illegally uses any computer or digital network for pecuniary gain for himself or any other person or commits any of the offences specified under sections 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74 and 75 of the Information Technology Act, 2000."

Section 67 of the IT Act will be the most dangerous for the common man with a smartphone in hand now. The section, "Publishing of information which is obscene in electronic form," includes "any material which is lascivious or appeal to the prurient interest." This could have a very broad interpretation.

Advocate Nagendra Naik says, "The Goonda Act provides for preventive arrest. In the Information Technology Act and The Copyright Act, you have to commit the offence to be arrested. But here, you can be taken into preventive custody even before you commit the said offences. In normal arrests, you can straightaway apply for bail. But under the Goonda Act, you cannot. There is a long process of review and you will be in custody at least till then. The third impact is, you can have a history sheet started against you by the police. Technically, your slips on WhatsApp will attract the Goonda Act against you."

Supreme Court advocate KV Dhananjay said the Goonda Act is a draconian piece of legislation and it necessarily mocks at the institution of courts and lawyers. "After the passage of the various amendments to the Goonda Act, Karnataka now looks like a mini North Korea where police mood swings will decide whether the ordinary citizen has any right at all," he said.

Advocate Shyam Sundar, says, "What if your smartphone has a list of repeated material sent out over days or weeks. Most people do not even know if their phones are affected by viruses which could be sending out such material. Another example is of Facebook. There are so many FB pages with pornographic content. If someone who has subscribed to such a page sends you a friend request and you accept it, that content will surface on your page. It will have a history of repetition. The amendment clearly opens up huge problems for the common people. There is no doubt of the law being grossly misused and the amendment to include provisions of the IT Act has been done without application of mind. What is lascivious appeal in the first place? A porn star has been made a film star in India. Is this not lust? Are there enough filters in place to secure your smartphone from online abuse?"

The new law will in all probability create more corruption than anything else, say experts. Dhananjay says, "Until last week, police postings in Bangalore and other bigger cities were selling for tens of lakhs. Thanks to these amendments, some postings that enforce the Goonda Act will now sell for a couple of crores. The public will not feel safe due to this draconian legislation. Those who enforce the Goonda Act, however, will become richer through corruption, thanks to the fear created by these new amendments."

One year in jail for the innocent too

Sunil Abraham gives two examples by which the amended Goonda Act will become a ruthless piece of legislation. "If I publish an image of a naked body as part of a scientific article about the human body, is it obscene or not? It will not be obscene and, if I am arrested under the IT Act, I will be produced before the magistrate within 24 hours and can explain it to him. But now, I will be arrested under the Goonda Act and need not be produced before a magistrate for 90 days. It can be extended to one year. So for one year, I will be in jail even if I have not committed any wrong. Another example pertains to bringing offences under the Copyright Act under the Goonda Act. In the Copyright Act, there is an exception for reporting, research, educational and people with disability. A visually impaired person, for example, can, without paying royalty, convert a book into another format like Braille or audio and share it with another visually impaired person on a non-profit basis. But if he is arrested under Goonda Act, he will be in jail for one year, even before he does it."

HAVE THEY READ STATUTE?
Supreme Court advocate KV Dhananjay says, "The definition of a 'digital offender' is simply laughable. I do not think that whoever asked the state government to include 'digital offence' under the Goonda Act has carefully read the Constitution of India. Under the Constitution, both copyright and telecommunications are exclusive central subjects. This means that states simply cannot make any law on these subjects." Dhananjay gives the example of payment of income tax. "You know already that only the central government can demand and collect your income taxes. Can any state government say that it will create a new law to punish its resident who defaults in payment of income tax? You would simply laugh at any such law. This new definition of 'digital offender' is no less amusing. Offences under the Information Technology Act, 2000, are exclusively punishable by the central government only. State governments have no power to say that an Act shall become an offence when it does not even have the power to regulate such an Act."

CRIMINAL LAW EXPERTS SAY
Senior designate advocate, MT Nanaiah: "This law will be too harsh. There are MLAs who do not know the meaning of cyber crime. We (advocates) will be kept busy at the cost of innocent people because of this step. It provides for arresting anyone who would allegedly be planning to do something. Finding him guilty or otherwise comes later. What happens if your phone is lost or somebody sends something from your phone without your knowledge? For the first few years, innocents will go to jail. Then the courts will probably intervene and call for modifying what is at best a bad law. A similar situation arose with Section 498(A) of IPC and Sections 3 and 4 of Dowry Prohibition Act. It was misused to such an extent that courts had to step in." Senior designate advocate and former State Public Prosecutor HS Chandramouli : "Even social legislations have been misused. And, in this case, most people are illiterate about what cyber crime is. It is mostly teenagers and college students who will feel the heat. These are the people who mostly forward material considered obscene. It is necessary to educate people through discussions, workshops in the bar associations, law college and with experts. The amendment has been passed in the Legislature without discussion, which is a tragedy. At least now, before it is gazetted, people should be warned about what is being brought into the Goonda Act. I do not know how fair adding 'digital offenders' in the Goonda Act will be to the public, but the chances of misuse are more. There are no riders or prosecution for misuse. And how many policemen know about cyber crimes? During the infamous 'kidney' case (where people were cheated and their kidneys removed) many policemen did not know the difference between kidneys and testicles."

ONE YEAR IN JAIL WITHOUT CHANCE OF BAIL FOR..

Forwarding a song from your phone
Forwarding an e-book from your email
A nude photo which the govt thinks is obscene
Any software that a company says it owns
A movie which a company says it has copyright on

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/bangalore-mirror-shyam-prasad-august-4-2014-we-the-goondas

Vote: Will Social Media Impact the Election?

praskrishna — 2013-04-15T08:30:59Z

As India enters election mode, social media has become one of many platforms where possible prime ministerial candidates are being scrutinized.

The article by R. Jai Krishna was published in the Wall Street Journal on April 15, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

On top of the list are Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi, who recently acquired the Twitter monikers #Pappu (“naïve”) and #Feku (“boastful”), respectively, following a string of public appearances observers saw as evidence they will be leading their respective parties in the upcoming national election.

A recent study found that social media could influence the electoral outcome in as many as 160 out of 543 seats in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament.

(These are constituencies where 10% of the voting population uses Facebook, or where the number of Facebook users is higher than the winning candidate’s margin of victory at the last election.)

	“No contestant can afford to ignore social media in the next Lok Sabha elections,” argued the study, put together by IRIS Knowledge Foundation, a Mumbai-based research group, and the Internet and Mobile Association of India, a trade body. Others are more skeptical. “The study assumes that users will behave homogenously, which isn’t true,” says Sunil Abraham, executive director at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society. While calling the study’s findings “ambitious,” Mr. Abraham said it was important to recognize the political power of Facebook, which could be used as a social platform but also to “plan a revolution.” But India’s Internet penetration is low: only 150 million people out a population of 1.2 billion go online, according to the IRIS-IAMAI study. The study estimates the number of social media users in the country is around 62 million, and that it may increase up to 80 million by time of national elections, which have to happen by May 2014.

“No contestant can afford to ignore social media in the next Lok Sabha elections,” argued the study, put together by IRIS Knowledge Foundation, a Mumbai-based research group, and the Internet and Mobile Association of India, a trade body.

Others are more skeptical. “The study assumes that users will behave homogenously, which isn’t true,” says Sunil Abraham, executive director at the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society.

While calling the study’s findings “ambitious,” Mr. Abraham said it was important to recognize the political power of Facebook, which could be used as a social platform but also to “plan a revolution.”

But India’s Internet penetration is low: only 150 million people out a population of 1.2 billion go online, according to the IRIS-IAMAI study. The study estimates the number of social media users in the country is around 62 million, and that it may increase up to 80 million by time of national elections, which have to happen by May 2014.

Indian political parties have started wising up to the power of online campaigning. Ahead of state elections in Uttar Pradesh last year, for instance, parties including the winning Samajwadi Party, Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party turned to social media ranging from Facebook to YouTube as well as to blogs and smartphone apps to promote their candidates and their agenda.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/wall-street-journal-april-15-2013-r-jai-krishna-vote-will-social-media-impact-the-election

Vodafone Report Explains Government Access to Customer Data

joe — 2014-06-19T10:38:01Z

Vodafone Group PLC, the world’s second largest mobile carrier, released a report on Friday, June 6 2014 disclosing to what extent governments can request their customers’ data.

The Law Enforcement Disclosure Report, a section of a larger annual Sustainability Report began by asserting that Vodafone "customers have a right to privacy which is enshrined in international human rights law and standards and enacted through national laws."

However, the report continues, Vodafone is incapable of fully protecting its customers right to privacy, because it is bound by the laws in the various countries in which it operates. "If we do not comply with a lawful demand for assistance, governments can remove our license to operate, preventing us from providing services to our customers," The report goes into detail about the laws in each of the 29 nations where the company operates.

Vodafone’s report is one of the first published by a multinational service provider. Compiling such a report was especially difficult, according to the report, for a few reasons. Because no comparable report had been published before, Vodafone had to figure out for themselves, the “complex task” of what information they could legally publish in each country. This difficulty was compounded by the fact that Vodafone operates physical infrastructure and thus sets up a business in each of the countries where it provides services. This means that Vodafone is subject to the laws and operating licenses of each nation where it operates, unlike as a search engine such as Google, which can provide services across international borders but still be subject to United States law – where it is incorporated.

The report is an important step forward for consumer privacy. First, the Report shows that the company is aware of the conflict of interest between government authorities and its customers, and the pivotal position that the company can play in honoring the privacy of its users by providing information regarding the same in all cases where it legally can. Additionally, providing the user insight into challenges that the company faces when addressing and responding to law enforcement requests, the Report provides a brief overview of the legal qualifications that must be met in each country to access customer data. Also, Vodafone’s report has encouraged other telecom companies to disclose similar information to the public. For instance, Deutsche Telekom AG, a large European and American telecommunications company, said Vodafone’s report had led it consider releasing a report of it’s own.

Direct Government Access

The report revealed that six countries had constructed secret wires or “pipes” which allowed them access to customers’ private data. This means that the governments of these six countries have immediate access to Vodafone’s network without any due process, oversight, or accountability for these opaque practices. Essentially, the report reveals, in order to operate in one of these jurisdictions, a communications company must ensure that authorities have, real time and direct access to all personal customer data at any time, without any specific justification. The report does not name these six nations for legal reasons.

"These pipes exist, the direct access model exists,” Vodafone's group privacy officer, Stephen Deadman, told the Guardian. “We are making a call to end direct access as a means of government agencies obtaining people's communication data. Without an official warrant, there is no external visibility. If we receive a demand we can push back against the agency. The fact that a government has to issue a piece of paper is an important constraint on how powers are used."

Data Organization

Vodafone’s Report lists the aggregate number of content requests they received in each country where it operates, and groups these requests into two major categories. The first is Lawful Interceptions, which is when the government directly listens in or reads the content of a communication. In the past, this type of action has been called wiretapping, but now includes reading the content of text messages, emails, and other communications.

The second data point Vodafone provides for each country is the number of Communications Data requests they receive from each country. These are requests for the metadata associated with customer communications, such as the numbers they have been texting and the time stamps on all of their texts and calls.

It is worth noting that all of the numbers Vodafone reports are warrant statistics rather than target statistics. Vodafone, according to the report, has chosen to include the number of times a government sent a request to Vodafone to "intrude into the private affairs of its citizens, not the extent to which those warranted activities then range across an ever-expanding multiplicity of devices, accounts and apps."

Data Construction

However, in many cases, laws in the various companies in which Vodafone operates prohibit Vodafone from publishing all or part of the aforementioned data. In fact, this is the rule rather than the exception. The majority of countries, including India, prohibit Vodafone from releasing the number of data requests they receive. Other countries publish the numbers themselves, so Vodafone has chosen not to reprint their statistics either. This is because Vodafone wants to encourage governments to take responsibility for informing their citizens of the statistics themselves.

The report also makes note of the process Vodafone went through to determine the legality of publishing these statistics. It was not always straightforward. For example, in Germany, when Vodafone’s legal team went to examine the legislation governing whether or not they could publish statistics on government data requests, they concluded that the laws were unclear, and asked German authorities for advice on how to proceed. They were informed that publishing any such statistics would be illegal, so they did not include any German numbers in their report. However, since that time, other local carriers have released similar statistics, and thus the situation remains unresolved.

Other companies have also recently released reports. Twitter, a microblogging website, Facebook, a social networking website, and Google a search engine with social network capabilities have all released comparable reports, but their reports differ from Vodafone’s in a number of ways. While Twitter, Google, and Facebook all specified the percent of requests granted, Vodafone released no similar statistics. However, Vodafone prepared discussions of the various legal constraints that each country imposed on telecom companies, giving readers an understanding of what was required in each country for authorities to access their data, a component that was left out of other recent reports. Once again, Vodafone’s report differed from those of Google Facebook and Twitter because while Vodafone opens businesses in each of the countries where it operates and is subject to their laws, Google, Facebook, and Twitter are all Internet companies and so are only governed by United States law.

Google disclosed that it received 27,427 requests over a six-month period ending in December, 2013, and also noted that the number of requests has increased consistently each six-month period since data began being compiled in 2009, when fewer than half as many requests were being made. On the other hand Google said that the percentage of requests it complied with (64% over the most recent period) had declined significantly since 2010, when it complied with 76% of requests.

Google went into less detail when explaining the process non-American authorities had to go through to access data, but did note that a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty was the primary way governments outside of the United States could force the release of user data. Such a treaty is an agreement between the United States and another government to help each other with legal proceedings. However, the report indicated that Google might disclose user information in situations when they were not legally compelled to, and did not go into detail about how or when it did that. Thus, given the difficulty of obtaining a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty in addition to local warrants or subpoenas, it seems likely that Google complies with many more non-American data requests than it was legally forced to.

Facebook has only released two such reports so far, for the two six month periods in 2013, but they too indicated an increasing number of requests, from roughly 26,000 to 28,147. Facebook plans to continue issuing reports every six months.

Twitter has also seen an increase of 22% in government requests between this and the previous reporting period, six months ago. Twitter attributes this increase in requests to an increase in users internationally, and it does seem that the website has a similarly growing user base, according to charts released by Twitter. It is worth noting that while large nations such as the United States and India are responsible for the majority of government requests, smaller nations such as Bulgaria and Ecuador also order telecom and Internet companies to turn over data.

Vodaphone’s Statistics

Though Vodafone’s report didn’t print statistics for the majority of the countries the report covered, looking at the few numbers they did publish can shed some light on the behavior of governments in countries where publishing such statistics is illegal. For the countries where Vodafone does release data, the numbers of government requests for Vodafone data were much higher than for Google data. For instance, Italy requested Vodafone data 605,601 times, while requesting Google data only 896 times. This suggests that other countries such as India could be looking at many more customers’ data through telecom companies like Vodafone than Internet companies like Google.

Vodafone stressed that they were not the only telecom company that was being forced to share customers’ data, sometimes without warrants. In fact, such access was the norm in countries where authorities demanded it.

India and the Reports

India is one of the most proliferate requesters of data, second only to the United States in number of requests for data from Facebook and fourth after the United States, France and Germany in number of requests for data from Google. In the most recent six-month period, India requested data from Google 2,513 times, Facebook 3,598 times, and Twitter 19 times. The percentage of requests granted varies widely from country. For example, while Facebook complies with 79% of United States authorities’ requests, it only grants 50% of India’s requests. Google responds to 83% of US requests but only 66% of India’s.

Facebook also provides data on the number of content restrictions each country requests. A content restriction request is where an authority asks Facebook to take down a particular status, photo, video, or other web content and no longer display it on their site. India, with 4,765 requests, is the country that most often asks Facebook to remove content.

While Vodafone’s report publishes no statistics on Indian data requests, because such disclosure would be illegal, it does discuss the legal considerations they are faced with. In India, the report explains, several laws govern Internet communications. The Information Technology Act (ITA) of 2000 is the parent legislation governing information technology in India. The ITA allows certain members of Indian national or state governments order an interception of a phone call or other communication in real time, for a number of reasons. According to the report, an interception can be ordered “if the official in question believes that it is necessary to do so in the: (a) interest of sovereignty and integrity of India; (b) the security of the State; (c) friendly relations with foreign states; (d) public order; or (e) the prevention of incitement of offences.” In short, it is fairly easy for a high-ranking official to order a wiretapping in India.

The report goes on to detail Indian authorities’ abilities to request other customer data beyond a lawful interception. The Code of Criminal Procedure allows a court or police officer to ask Vodafone and other telecom companies to produce “any document or other thing” that the officer believes is necessary for any investigation. The ITA extends this ability to any information stored in any computer, and requires service providers to extend their full assistance to the government. Thus, it is not only legally simple to order a wiretapping in India; it is also very easy for authorities to obtain customer web or communication data at any time.

It is clear that Indian laws governing communication have very little protections in place for consumer privacy. However, many in India hope to change this reality. The Group of Experts chaired by Justice AP Shah, the Department of Personnel and Training, along with other concerned groups have been working towards the drafting of a privacy legislation for India. According to the Report of the Group of Experts on Privacy, the legislation would fix the 50 or so privacy laws in India that are outdated and unable to protect citizen’s privacy when they use modern technology.

On the other hand, the Indian government is moving forward with a number of plans to further infringe the privacy of civilians. For example, the Central Monitoring System, a clandestine electronic surveillance program, gives India’s security agencies and income tax officials direct access to communications data in the country. The program began in 2007 and was announced publicly in 2009 to little fanfare and muted public debate. The system became operational in 2013.

Conclusion

Vodafone’s report indicates that it is concerned about protecting its customer’s privacy, and Vodafone’s disclosure report is an important step forward for consumer web and communication privacy. The report stresses that company practice and government policy need to come together to protect citizen’s privacy and –businesses cannot do it alone. However, the report reveals what companies can do to effect privacy reform. By challenging authorities abilities to access customer data, as well as publishing information about these powers, they bring the issue to the government’s attention and open it up to public debate. Through Vodafone’s report, the public can see why their governments are making surveillance decisions. Yet, in India, there is still little adoption of transparent business practices such as these. Perhaps if more companies were transparent about the level of government surveillance their customers were being subjected to, their practices and policies for responding to requests from law enforcement, and the laws and regulations that they are subject to - the public would press the government for stronger privacy safeguards and protections.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/vodafone-report-explains-govt-access-to-customer-data

Vimeo, DailyMotion, Pastebin Among Sites Blocked In India For 'Anti-India' Content From ISIS

praskrishna — 2015-01-02T16:43:20Z

The Indian government has convinced ISPs to block dozens of popular websites accused of hosting “anti-India” content posted by members of the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

The story was published by IB Times on December 31. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

GitHub, Pastebin, as well as the video sites Vimeo and DailyMotion were among those rendered inaccessible to many of India’s nearly 250 million Internet users.

The text repository Pastebin first tweeted on Dec. 19 that it had been blocked, confirming on Dec. 26 that the blockade was at the behest of India’s Department of Telecom. Pranesh Prakash, the policy director at the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore, posted a list of the blocked sites Wednesday. Notice the list was issued Dec. 17.

Insane! Govt orders blocking of 32 websites including @internetarchive @vimeo @github @pastebin #censorship #FoEx pic.twitter.com/F75ngSGohJ

â€” Pranesh Prakash (@pranesh_prakash) December 31, 2014

Hours later Arvind Gupta, the national head of information technology at India’s Bharatiya Janata Party, confirmed on Twitter that a block had indeed been put in place. Other than referencing “ongoing investigations,” Gupta did not provide specific details on the type of threats being made.

The websites that have been blocked were based on an advisory by Anti Terrorism Squad, and were carrying Anti India content from ISIS. 1/2

â€” Arvind Gupta (@buzzindelhi) December 31, 2014

The sites that have removed objectionable content and/or cooperated with the on going investigations, are being unblocked. 2/2

â€” Arvind Gupta (@buzzindelhi) December 31, 2014

The move comes after it was discovered that the operator of a prominent pro-ISIS Twitter account was based in Bangalore. Mehdi Masroor Biswas, 24, was arrested earlier this month after a Channel 4 News investigation determined he was behind @ShamiWitness, an account with more than 17,700 followers and 2 million tweets seen each month.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled the “Make in India” campaign earlier this year in an attempt to encourage international businesses to invest in India. The campaign specifically mentions information technology as a sector in which India wishes to improve.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/ib-times-jeff-stone-december-31-2014-sites-blocked-in-india-for-anti-india-content-from-isis

Untangling the web of India's 'ungovernable' Net

praskrishna — 2013-04-16T06:06:20Z

India sells itself as a tech hub, outsourcing IT experts to the world. At home, it dreams of "equity on the Net." But millions remain unconnected and digital surveillance is on the rise.

This was published in Deutsche Welle on April 15, 2013. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

The Indian government has a dream. It dreams of the "Equinet" - a time when "there shall be equity on the Net."

"The Internet must not just be a platform for the privileged - the Internet must become an inclusive platform," India's communications minister Kapil Sibal says. "In fact, my vision is that the Internet should ultimately become the Equinet. In other words, all those, no matter which station in life they belong to, should have access to the Internet, and that can only happen if all the elements of the Internet are such that people can access them at affordable costs."

India has the third highest number of people on the Net, with about 150 million people connected.

But with a population of 1.2 billion, 150 million is not that many. Internet penetration languishes at around 10 percent, while in the United States and China - the top two countries in world rankings - Internet penetration is at 78 and 40 percent, respectively.

Like in America… in 1994

It's a fact that Google chairman Eric Schmidt highlighted on a recent tour of India, among other Asian countries.

"The Internet feels [in India] like in America in 1994," he says. "It is crucial for India to invest and enable fast fiber Internet connectivity within the country, between the country and the other countries."


While touring Asia, Schmidt said India seemed to have "rested on its laurels" after early success in the IT sector

You would think that connectivity would be better in India. The country prides itself on being a tech hub, with its centers of excellence in places like Bangalore. It has outsourced information technology specialists globally for over ten years.

Communications minister Sibal insists the government is investing where it can, saying India will connect 250,000 villages with fiber optics in the "next year or so."

"The networks should be in place, the fiber optics should be in place, [connectivity] should be efficient and of high speed, and above all, the access to handsets, which is really the key - unless handsets are affordable and accessible to ordinary people, you will not get the kind of penetration that you want from the Internet," he adds.

However, for some, there are even greater challenges for India than poor connectivity and bad infrastructure.

All eyes on you

In mid-March, police in India's financial capital Mumbai launched the country's first "Social Media Lab."

Mumbai police say they will use it to monitor and track "which topics are trending among the youth so [they] can plan law and order in a good way."

The Mumbai Social Media Lab comes amid concerns over "moral policing" of the Net by Indian authorities, and censorship - especially where comments involve political figures. The Times of India reports numerous requests by authorities to have content removed by Google and Twitter. There have also been arrests under the remit of a controversial section - 66A - of India's IT Act.

Sibal denies India wants to censor the Net. If people have been arrested under Section 66A of the IT Act, it's because police officials have either misread the law, or acted independently, he says.

"Yes, but I would say, from where does this emanate? Does it emanate with a complete understanding at the top?" asks V.C. Vivekanandan, director of the Institute of Global Internet Governance and Advocacy.


Indian communications minister Kapil Sibal says "Internet governance is an oxymoron"

"There are various, multiple layers of governance in a huge country like India, where people could be enthusiastic in their own way about thinking what is right and wrong," says Vivekanandan. "So, I don't really see censorship as such, but they would like to have discourse in a model which was pre-Internet."

Tracking private lives

But in other areas, India is showing itself to be very comfortable in the Internet age - and where it has its eyes fixed on the future.

"From what I can tell, the social media monitoring cell in Mumbai is perhaps one of the more benign components because it isn't keeping track of private communications," says Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore.

However, the Indian government plans to track everybody's online activities - that means anything that uses the Internet as a communication network.

"There are very many other projects like the unique identification (UID) and the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) that will keep track of private communications," says Abraham.

The UID is the Indian government's centralized biometric identity management system, which will connect more than 20 databases that 12 intelligence and law enforcement agencies will be able to access.

"These databases include banking records, telecommunications records and travel records [among other things]," says Abraham. "So, it's a very large scale attempt by the Indian government to place citizens under 360 degree blanket surveillance."

Internet governance is an oxymoron

But how these moves square with Sibal's vision of the Equinet is hard to see.


This Delhi laywer, Mohit Sharma, is one of only 11 percent of Indians who are connected to the Internet

The communications minister believes Indians will not be dissuaded from using the Net.

"The fact that 150 million people are on the Net is evidence of the fact that they are not scared, and if you go to Twitter today, there are more abuses on Twitter than perhaps you can find anywhere else in the world," says Sibal.

That doesn't necessarily mean that the government thinks this is a good thing. But Sibal insists he is against Internet governance - in fact, he says "Internet governance is an oxymoron."

"How can you govern something that cannot be governed? Because anybody can say anything on the Net," says Sibal. "So, there should be an element of self-regulation. Just as we interact with each other in civilized society, similarly people on the Net should also interact with each other with self-restraint."

But the CIS's Sunil Abraham isn't convinced.

"If one listens very carefully to what the minister says, he says you cannot regulate the Internet. But you can regulate what citizens do on the Internet," he says. "You can regulate what corporations do on the Internet. And you can also regulate what the government does on the Internet."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/d-w-april-15-2013-untangling-the-web-of-indias-ungovernable-net

UN Human Rights Council urged to protect human rights online

geetha — 2014-06-19T13:28:32Z

63 civil society groups urged the UN Human Rights Council to address global challenges to freedom of expression, privacy and other human rights on the Internet. Centre for Internet & Society joined in the statement, delivered on behalf of the 63 groups by Article 19.

The 26th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is currently ongoing (June 10-27, 2014). On June 19, 2014, 63 civil society groups joined together to urge the United Nations Human Rights Council to protect human rights online and address global challenged to their realization. Centre for Internet & Society joined in support of the statement ("the Civil Society Statement"), which was delivered by Article 19 on behalf of the 63 groups.

In its consensus resolution A/HRC/20/8 (2012), the UNHRC affirmed that the "same rights that people have offline must also be protected online, in particular freedom of expression, which is applicable regardless of frontiers and through any media of one’s choice". India, a current member of the UNHRC, stood in support of resolution 20/8. The protection of human rights online was also a matter of popular agreement at NETmundial 2014, which similarly emphasised the importance of protecting human rights online in accordance with international human rights obligations. Moreover, the WSIS+10 High Level Event, organised by the ITU in collaboration with other UN entities, emphasized the criticality of expanding access to ICTs across the globe, including infrastructure, affordability and reach.

The Civil Society Statement at HRC26 highlights the importance of retaining the Internet as a global resource - a democratic, free and pluralistic platform. However, the recent record of freedom of expression and privacy online have resulted in a deficit of trust and free, democratic participation. Turkey, Malaysia, Thailand, Egypt and Pakistan have blocked web-pages and social media content, while Edward Snowden's revelations have heightened awareness of human rights violations on the Internet.

At a time when governance of the Internet and its institutions is evolving, a human rights centred perspective is crucial. Openness and transparency - both in the governance of Internet institutions and rights online - are crucial to continuing growth of the Internet as a global, democratic and free resource, where freedom of expression, privacy and other rights are respected regardless of location or nationality. In particular, the Civil Society Statement calls attention to principles of necessity and proportionality to regulate targeted interception and collection of personal data.

The UNHRC, comprising 47 member states, is called upon to address these global challenges. Guided by resolutions A/HRC/20/8 and A/RES/68/167, the WSIS+10 High Level Event Outcome Documents (especially operative paragraphs 2, 8 and 11 of the Vision Document) and the forthcoming report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights regarding privacy in the digital age, the UNHRC as well as other states may gather the opportunity and intention to put forth a strong case for human rights online in our post-2015 development-centred world.

Civil Society Statement:

The full oral statement can be accessed here.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/un-human-rights-council-urged-to-protect-human-rights-online

Twitter's India troubles show tough path ahead for digital platforms

Aditya Sharma — 2021-06-26T02:54:19Z

Twitter is in a standoff with Indian authorities over the government's new digital rules. Critics see the rules as an attempt to curb free speech, while others say more action is needed to hold tech giants accountable.

The blog by Aditya Sharma was published by DW on 21 June 2021. Torsha Sarkar was quoted.

Twitter holds a relatively low share of India's social media market. But, since 2017, the huge nation has emerged as Twitter's fastest-growing market, becoming critical to its global expansion plans.

In February, the Indian government introduced new guidelines to regulate digital content on rapidly growing social media platforms.

The so-called Intermediary Guidelines are aimed at regulating content on internet platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, making them more accountable to legal requests for the removal of posts and sharing information about the originators of messages.

Employees at these companies can be held criminally liable for not complying with the government's requests.

Large social media firms must also set up mechanisms to address grievances and appoint executives to liaise with law enforcement under the new rules, as well as appoint an India-based compliance officer who would be held criminally liable for the content on their platforms.

The Indian government says the rules empower "users who become victims of defamation, morphed images, sexual abuse," among other online crimes. It also said that the rules seek to tackle the problem of disinformation.

But critics fear that the rules could be used to target government opponents and make sure dissidents don't use the platforms.

Social media companies were expected to comply with the new rules by May 25.

Some Indian media reports have recently said that Twitter lost its status as an "intermediary" and the legal protection that came with it, due to its failure to comply with the new rules.

Failure to comply and serious implications

Apar Gupta, the executive director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, a New Delhi-based digital rights advocacy group, says failure to comply with the rules could threaten Twitter's India operations.

"Not complying with the rules would pose a real risk to Twitter's operational environment," he told DW.

"It will need to go to court to defend itself each time criminal prosecutions are launched against it," he added.

The first case against Twitter was filed last week, where it was charged with failing to stop the spread of a video on its platform that allegedly incited "hate and enmity" between two religious groups.

'Heavy censorship'

Gupta says adhering to all the government's demands would substantially change Twitter.

"Absolute compliance would mean heavy censorship of individual tweets, removal of the manipulated media tags, and blocking/suspension of accounts at the government's behest," he said.

Torsha Sarkar, policy officer at the Bengaluru-based Centre for Internet and Society, fears that Twitter might at times be compelled to overcomply with government demands, threatening user rights.

"This can be either by over-complying with flawed information requests, thereby selling out its users, or taking down content that offends the majoritarian sensibilities," she told DW.

Last week, three special rapporteurs appointed by a top UN human rights body expressed "serious concerns" that certain parts of the guidelines "may result in the limiting or infringement of a wide range of human rights."

They urged New Delhi to review the rules, adding that they did not conform to India's international human rights obligations and could threaten the digital rights of Indians.

Twitter's balancing act

It is not the first time that Twitter has been accused of giving in to government pressure to censor content on its platform.

At the height of the long-running farmer protests, Twitter blocked hundreds of tweets and accounts, including the handle of a prominent news magazine. It subsequently unblocked them following public outrage.

The US company stopped short of complying with demands to block the accounts of activists, politicians and journalists, arguing that such a move would "violate their fundamental right to free expression under Indian law."

According to local media reports, Twitter's Indian executives were reportedly threatened with fines and imprisonment if the accounts were not taken down.

Special police notify Twitter offices

Last month, the labeling of a tweet by a politician from the ruling BJP as "manipulated media" prompted a special unit of the Delhi police to visit Twitter's offices in the capital and neighboring Gurgaon. Police notified the offices about an investigation into the labeling of the post.

Twitter India's managing director, Manish Maheswari, was said to have been asked to appear before the police for questioning, according to media reports.

Some Twitter employees have refused to talk about the ongoing tensions for fear of government reprisals.

"Such kind of intimidation does not happen every day. (But) Everyone at Twitter India is terrified," people familiar with the matter told DW on the condition of anonymity.

Big Tech VS sovereign power?

Those calling for better regulation of tech giants say transnational social media companies like Twitter lack accountability, blaming them for the alleged inaction against online abuse and disinformation campaigns.

"The problem with these rules is that they centralize greater power toward the government without providing for the objective benefit of rights toward users," Gupta said.

"If Twitter were to comply with these rules, it would make a bad situation worse," he said.

Twitter is unlikely to ditch a major market such as India.

Sarkar from the Centre for Internet and Society said "It might be difficult to say how the powers of big tech are going to collide with sovereign nations, especially in light of flawed legal interventions around the world."

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/dw-june-21-2021-aditya-sharma-twitter-india-troubles-show-tough-path-ahead-for-digital-platforms

Tulu Wikipedia Tutorial

praskrishna — 2015-12-15T07:50:52Z

Dr. U.B. Pavanaja trained the people involved in the creation of the videos.

Tutorial video on starting with Tulu Wikipedia which is in incubation:

Tutorial video explaining how to start with Tulu Wikipedia which is in incubator:

Tutorial video explaining how to add new article to Tulu Wikipedia:

Tutorial video explaining how to type in Tulu Wikipedia:

Tutorial video explaining how to format articles in Tulu Wikipedia:

The people behind these videos:

Prof. Vishwanatha Badikana for Script
Lasya Shetty for Voice
Abhishek Shetty, Saarang Community radio at St Aloysius College Mangaluru for Audio Recording
Soundarya Shetty for Mixing and Editing
Dr. U.B. Pavanaja for Conception, Direction, Mixing and Editing

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/openness/news/tulu-wikipedia-tutorial

TIkTok: It’s time for Biden to make a decision on his digital policy with China

aman — 2021-01-22T06:11:43Z

As the United State's new president comes into office he is faced with creating a cohesive digital relations policy that corrects some of the damage done by his predecessor. This article is the first part of a series analysing his policies and challenges.

While on the campaign trail, now US president elect Joe Biden, made it clear to voters that he viewed Tik Tok as “a matter of genuine concern.” The statement came amidst a growing environment of hostility within the American government against the application. At the helm of the hostility was (now former) president Donald Trump’s passing of an executive order banning Tik Tok in the country and his attempts at forcing its parent company ByteDance to restructure the app under American ownership. Now, as the presidency passes hands, it is worth examining how the government got here and just how concerned the Biden administration should be with Tik Tok and how their strategy with the app could set the tone for digital relations with China going forward

The Road so far: The ban and forced sale of TikTok

America’s motivation to ban and sell the application can be explained by two contrasting factors: the cybersecurity risks that TikTok poses, and the country’s currently ongoing trade war with China. On the security side TikTok has faced immense scrutiny from governments around the world as to the amount of data that the application collects from its users as well as the potential links between Bytedance and the Chinese government. Furthermore there is a belief that due to the Chinese legislation that compels companies to assist the state on matters of national intelligence, there is little TikTok could do should the Chinese state decide to use it as an instrument of data collection. On the side of trade, the TikTok ban represents one of the more landmark blows dealt by the Trump government in its trade war with China. The US, since the start of his presidency has levied exclusive tariffs on specific Chinese commodities totalling to more than $550 billion. China has in response levied its own tariffs on certain American goods, with a total value of those estimated at $185 billion. Beyond these tariffs, the move to ban TikTok extends the trade war by creating clear hurdles for Chinese corporations to exist within the US market and firmly extended Trump’s protectionist trade policies into the digital sphere.

As such, on 6th August 2020, Trump released an executive order banning TikTok (as well as Chinese messaging and social media app Wechat). The ban has, however, since been indefinitely suspended as part of ongoing litigation on the matter at the federal level.

Shortly after the ban, came the attempts at forcing through the sale. While the deal has generally been referred to as ‘the TikTok sale’, it is not actually an outright purchase of the social media platform by an American company (Microsoft attempted such a purchase but was rejected by Byte Dance). Rather, the deal would see the establishment of a new US based subsidiary called TikTok global that would be partly owned (20%) by Oracle and Walmart, with Oracle becoming a trusted technology provider in order to ensure that US user’s data remains within the state. The agreement stipulates that the board of this new entity would have 4 out of 5 of the seats populated by US citizens, and that the company would go public as well. The current agreement would still see Bytedance retain ownership of the algorithms used by TikTok, which is in line with restrictions from the Chinese government preventing the sale of the algorithm to a foriegn owner without a state granted license.

How should the Biden administration handle this situation?

Dealing with the TikTok question must be one of the Biden administration’s top most priorities. The most obvious question they face is whether or not to reverse the ban and to continue to push through the sale between Bytedance and Oracle.

The case for enforcing the ban until the sale to American owners seems one that is straightforward enough. The cybersecurity concerns surrounding Bytedance’s proximity to the Chinese state and the influence of Chinese legislation are reasonable concerns. And any data gained from the application in the hands of a hostile state could be potentially harmful. This threat could be potentially reduced based on the role played by Oracle as a trusted technology partner. However with details of what exactly constitutes the functions of a ‘trusted technology partner’ it is impossible to say this with any great certainty. Simultaneously, there is a slight sense of irony in a Chinese based digital company protesting against another country’s protectionist stance to the internet.

Nonetheless these benefits are in many ways greatly over exaggerated, and in many ways allowing TikTok to return without requiring a sale could prove more beneficial in the long term. Not only would the app’s return be welcomed by its immense audience (estimated 100 million US users), it would also be a clear demonstration of America’s commitment to a less fragmented internet and more open digital economy. Furthermore, revoking the ban would also allow for the opportunity to reassess and reformulate the US’s economic and political strategy with regards to Chinese technology.

On the economic side, a retraction of the ban could signal the beginning of the end of the US-China trade war. Chinese investors are sure to see the shift from a radical republican president to a centrist democrat one as the perfect opportunity to increase foreign investment, which had been steadily declining recently. Such investment could prove significantly more substantial to the United States in a post covid-19 world as opposed to even in 2019. It is not unimaginable that Biden would look to maximise this opportunity to boost the economy.

On the political side, the government has to evaluate the success of sanctions levied against Chinese technology and whether that approach of blanket banning will translate effectively to the digital sphere. Not only has the US’s sanctions against certain chinese technologies proved unsuccessful, tools such as VPNs that can negate a ban make this strategy even less effective in the digital space.

The largest hurdle to revoking the ban would be the genuine cybersecurity concerns with a Chinese corporation having access American citizens’ data. However, dealing with these concerns through a simple ban of the application would only solve this one instance of excessive surveillance and data collection by a foreign app. Rather any solution must look to fix the issue at its root - that being the need for a more cohesive, detailed and overarching national data protection and cybersecurity policy. Such a policy could place clear limitations on data collection, stipulate data localisation policies for sensitive information and outline numerous other means of reducing the threat involved with allowing applications from states such as China to operate in the US.

Ultimately, Biden will be confronted with the reality of this situation the moment he enters office. The decision he makes on TikTok would set the tone for his term and for his government’s relationship with China. Whatever he decides to do, he needs to do it as soon as possible. The clock is ticking.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/tiktok-it2019s-time-for-biden-to-make-a-decision-on-his-digital-policy-with-china

Thousands go online against 66A

praskrishna — 2012-11-30T06:40:38Z

An online petition aimed at amending section 66A of the Information Technology (IT) Act and re-examining internet laws has garnered 3,000 signatures since it began on Tuesday — two days before Kapil Sibal, telecom and IT minister, chairs a meeting with the cyber regulation advisory committee.

This article by Apoorva Dutt was published in DNA on November 29, 2012. Pranesh Prakash is quoted.

The petition, anchored on Change.org, a platform for social initiatives, was started by Bangalore-based advocate Gautam John after two girls were arrested for their Facebook post on imposing a bandh in the city on the day Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray was cremated. Following their arrests, Shaheen Dhada has deleted her Facebook account while her friend Rini Srinivasan who merely liked the post has opened a new account on the social networking site. However, she has vowed to refrain from making political statements.

John is blunt about the legislative effect an online petition can have. l Turn to p8.

“Honestly, I don’t believe that a petition can change laws, but it gives concerned citizens a platform for documenting their concern in such troubling scenarios. To some extent, this sort of petition can represent a civil society’s point of view. No more can a government authority say ‘only NGOs care about an issue’. Now they know – thousands of ordinary people care,” John said.

Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre For Internet and Society in Bangalore, points out the flaws in section 66A that have been exploited in cases like the Palghar incident. “Section 66A is very broadly-worded and the punishment (three years imprisonment) is excessive,” he said. “The law was borrowed – that too badly – from a British law. There are many a things greatly flawed in this unconstitutional provision, from the disproportionality of the punishment to the non-existence of the crime. The 2008 amendment to the IT Act was one of eight laws passed in 15 minutes without any debate in the winter session of Parliament.”

The petition also aims to organise a meeting of the civil society stakeholders to look into these concerns. A similar meeting was scheduled to be held in August, but it did not take place.

Sudarshan Balachandran of Change.org is the lead campaigner and organiser of the petition. He hopes to hand over a copy of the petition to Sibal during the meeting on Thursday. “Sibal has gone on record to say that they will examine the law, and if they feel it doesn’t work, it will be junked. So I am hopeful,” said Balachandran.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/dnaindia-nov-29-2012-apoorva-dutt-thousands-go-online-against-66a

The year social media came of age in India

praskrishna — 2012-12-31T03:33:19Z

Sambhavi Saxena, 19, was at Jantar Mantar on December 25 protesting against Nirbhaya's brutal rape when Delhi Police swooped down, rounded her up along with other agitators and took them to the Parliament Street police station. Sambhavi fired tweet after tweet even as she was bundled into a van.

The article by Javed Anwer and Rukmini Shrinivasan was published in the Times of India on December 31, 2012. Sunil Abraham is quoted.

She went on broadcasting to the world all that was happening around her. "Illegally being held here at Parliament St Police Station Delhi w/ 15 other women. Terrified, pls RT," she tweeted. It worked. In a flash, more than 1,700 people retweeted her SOS. Social media analytics firm Favstar later said the message reached over two lakh people.

Police later contested many of Sambhavi's claims. Yet, there was no denying it was her voice that was heard. Her tweets triggered a social media frenzy. The media reacted swiftly. Lawyers volunteered, activists landed up at the police station. Celebrities condemned the action. The police stood no chance.

For the government and keepers of law, it was a PR disaster. They had lost a battle they were accustomed to winning hands down. Now, there was a pesky entity — the public — seeking to change the rules of the game. A teenager armed with a smartphone had used the magic platform called social media to devastating effect, catching the agents of the state flatfooted.

India might have tasted the power of the smartphone first in 2011 when Anna Hazare's stinging anti-corruption message rode the social media wave. But this year saw social media creating a new phenomenon — the rise of the virtually connected Indian youth — which is likely to redraw the terms of engagement between the state and its urban population.

The networking tool that's now a weapon

Finance minister P Chidambaram recently tried to sum up the phenomenon by likening social media-driven snap protests to a flash-mob phenomenon. "Flash mob is a new phenomenon... sometimes they gather to dance and sing. But sometimes they gather to protest... I don't think we are fully prepared to deal with it." Going by the last fortnight, when the government fumbled in dealing with widespread protests over Nirbhaya, the minister's admission was an understatement. Let alone being "fully prepared", they didn't have a clue.

The unbridling of the power of the social media was undoubtedly a top, if not no. 1, trend of 2012 in India. In many cases, it set the agenda of public discourse. As in Palghar, where young Shaheen Dhada's Facebook comment on the shutdown of Mumbai after Bal Thackeray's death kicked off a storm, the virtual world triggered several real-world controversies.

In fits and starts, politicians and the government realized the folly of not joining the fast-unfolding revolution, the exceptions being the Twitter-savvy Shashi Tharoor and Omar Abdullah. The @PMOIndia Twitter handle was born, and today 3.5 lakh people follow it. A host of politicians soon hopped on, realizing the freedom the platform offered for comment on issues, which TV studios didn't.

For Bollywood celebs and cricketers, it became a great way to keep in touch with fans. But the real power of this irreverent and often insolent medium lay with the young aam admi who used social media fearlessly. They voiced their opinion and unsparingly ridiculed leaders with hashtags like #theekhai, making powerful headlines out of what otherwise would have been just whistling in the air.

What's the USP of the social media? On this platform, free speech is unhindered. It's a virtual megaphone with a global reach, as the numbers show. Whether it's Twitter or Facebook, India is a huge presence. Facebook has more than 65 million active users here, putting the country among the top five worldwide in terms of users. Twitter, which has 200 million active users globally, doesn't provide country-specific numbers. But SemioCast, a Paris-based research firm, said in a report in July that India had around 18 million Twitter accounts, placing it sixth among the biggest Twitter nations.

A lot of this social media boom happened in 2012. Research firm SocialBakers estimated in November that the number of Indian Facebook users swelled by 14 million in the past six months. While internet penetration in India is just 11% — three times lower than the global average — around 137million users make the country third biggest in terms of web-connected citizens. Most of these users are urban and young. A Comscore report says 75% of web users here are under-35.

Unlike youngsters in many other countries, Indians are politically active on the web. A Pew Research study this December established that nearly 45% of Indian web users, most of them from urban areas, connect on social media to discuss politics. Only Arab countries scored higher than India on this account. The numbers are backed by GlobalWebIndex, which noted in a September report that India is the third most socially active country with around 78 points.

But this unfettered, unfiltered flow of information and messages showed its ugly side as well. The mischievous rumour-mongering in the wake of the Assam riots was a case in point, as MMSs and incendiary text messages triggered an exodus of people belonging to the northeast from Bangalore, Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad.

Facebook and Twitter started off as friendship and networking tools. But, they have evolved into potent weapons of social mobilization. In a way, India Against Corruption can be credited with starting it in mid-2010. "If you have a worthy cause, social media provides you an unbiased, unfiltered avenue," says Shivendra Chauhan, social media manager for the outfit. "Without it, we wouldn't have got the kind of overwhelming support we received from the youth."

But Sunil Abraham, executive director of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, cautions against being overly technologically deterministic. "Technology doesn't have agency; human beings do. Transferring energy from social media on to the streets isn't something that'll happen every time. It depends on whether the message resonates," he says.

While the anti-corruption movement ran on a sophisticated social media strategy and campaign, the ongoing anti-rape protests have no single organizer or banner, just a message that resonates, says Abraham. On the other hand, when Anonymous India called for boots on the ground at its protests against internet censorship, the turnout was poor, far lower than the number of hashtags on Twitter would have indicated, he adds.

Abraham points out there are close linkages between internet, text messages, social media and mainstream media. "These channels leak into each other and the causal connection becomes unclear," he says. Madhuresh Kumar, national coordinator of the National Alliance of People's Movements (NAPM), an umbrella organization of grassroots movements of the marginalized, agrees. "We use social media, not so much to mobilize people to come to our protests, but to mobilize the mainstream media."

The message determines the power of the medium. If it's something that connects viscerally, like the Nirbhaya protests, its power and reach can be beyond imagination. If it is a more niche message, like an SOS for a dwindling fish species, it will reach a smaller, targeted audience such as environmentalists. But it will reach — unhindered in the palm of your hand.

Look at it any which way, it is here to stay. So, it's time for the state to learn to deal with the new power of the ordinary citizen.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/times-of-india-december-31-2012-javed-anwer-and-rukmini-shrinivasan-the-year-social-media-came-of-age-in-india

The trouble with trolls

praskrishna — 2014-07-28T05:42:36Z

Social networking sites give trolls the ability to hide their real identity and cause grief to others. Here is what you need to do if you face an online attack.

The article by Vishal Mathur was published in Livemint on July 22, 2014. Sunil Abraham gave his inputs.

Social networking sites give trolls the ability to hide their real identity and cause grief to others. Here is what you need to do if you face an online attack.

Though social networks were not designed with the intention of letting someone anonymously abuse another online, the reality is that people utilize the ability to hide behind online identities to threaten other users. These could be veiled attacks, direct abuse, or even threats to “cause bodily harm”. What can you do if you’re trolled and threatened on any social network? Follow our five-step guide. Avoid conversation if you can The responses could come in relation to something you may have just posted online. Or perhaps it could be just a random trolling attempt, to get a response from you. It is important to understand and identify such intentions. And as difficult as it may be, do not respond. Getting into a direct interaction with a bully only makes things worse. Report to the social network You should report any instance of cyber bullying or harassment to the host social network—the website or forum on which the interaction happened. There are various methods of getting in touch with the moderators—customer support email, contact submission forms or even via phone, in certain locations. Describe the problem in detail, and persist till the offending account is blocked from the platform. “Most social networks have systems that allow you to report abusive content and users. However, there is great variance in the speed with which they respond across different platforms, jurisdictions, etc.,” says Sunil Abraham, executive director at the Bangalore-based non-profit research organization Centre for Internet and Society. New Delhi-based Anja Kovacs, project director, at civil society organization Internet Democracy Project, adds: “Blocking and reporting an account can be two ways to stop harassment on some social networks, but on other platforms, such as Twitter, it is possible for the person to immediately make a new account under a different username, meaning that these measures do not necessarily stop the harassment.” Ankhi Das, director, public policy, India and South Asia at social network Facebook, says: “Every reported piece of content is reviewed. Serial offenders are notified for non-compliance.” Facebook’s Community Standards, that prevent harassment and offensive posts, have an 11-point categorization for reported content—violence and threats, hate speech, graphic content, bullying and harassment, to name some. Raheel Khursheed, head of news, politics and government at Twitter India, did not respond to our mail about how Twitter handles trolls at the time of going to press. On blogs and forums, it may be a bit easier to deal with trolling and abuse. If it is your own blog, you can delete comments and block users. If it is a forum, the administrator can do it for you. But, with social networks having millions of users, it is not possible to have one administrator managing it all. And it is not just Facebook and Twitter, all social networks have a method by which you can register your complaint. LinkedIn, for example, automatically blocks a user who gets multiple “I don’t know” responses to invitations to connect. There is a strong monitoring policy where any reported content (recommendations or direct messages) is examined and immediate warnings are sent out to offending parties. Keep a copy of the offensive posts Be it a post, or a series of posts, direct message or even an offending photograph, always save it for future reference. Never assume that the matter will end soon, and always prepare for the worst. Don’t ignore privacy settings Most people start using Facebook, Twitter and other social networks without paying much attention to the privacy settings—what content people can see on your page, and who can directly contact you. Be conservative in sharing information—the less you share, the lower the chances of someone picking on you. “Avoid friending or linking to people whom you don’t know in real life unless you are certain of the chain of trust that exists between you and the unknown person,” says Abraham. New Delhi-based cyber lawyer Apar Gupta, adds: “The privacy settings on most social networking platforms allow users to prevent (restrict) the audience for their posts as well as strangers from contacting them. This will prevent most cases of online harassment.” Get help from the law In case social networks are not able to effectively block a user, or are in some way unwilling to do so, take help from the law-enforcement authorities. File an FIR in the nearest police station. Unfortunately, the progress may not be very smooth. The reality is that not every law-enforcement officer may know about social networking sites. “You could try and go to the police, but without support from the social network platform, they are often at a loss to do much themselves,” warns Kovacs. The police may look for hints of threat to cause bodily harm or worse still, to life. In such cases, they may recommend the case to the Cyber Crime Cell of the Central Bureau of Investigation. “Generally, while the substantive offences do exist under law, the process for having them enforced is deficient. These are deeper structural problems of delay, investigation and conviction which are prevalent across criminal justice or civil litigation,” clarifies Gupta. Officials at the Cyber Crime Cell say they take up cases after reference from the local police, who file the report first and do a preliminary level of investigation. But it is important to realize that only the police and the law-enforcement agencies have the right to demand further details about the perpetrator from the social networks, starting with profile details and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, which will help track the person down. Das clarifies: “Facebook has a point-of-contact system through which the law-enforcement agencies tell us what the actual case is, depending on severity. The police may ask us to take down particular content, or even ask for user information like IP info, to prevent real crime.” According to Facebook’s Government Requests Report for July-December 2013, the network restricted access to 4,765 pieces of content after requests from the Indian government and law-enforcement agencies.

Though social networks were not designed with the intention of letting someone anonymously abuse another online, the reality is that people utilize the ability to hide behind online identities to threaten other users. These could be veiled attacks, direct abuse, or even threats to “cause bodily harm”. What can you do if you’re trolled and threatened on any social network? Follow our five-step guide.

Avoid conversation if you can
The responses could come in relation to something you may have just posted online. Or perhaps it could be just a random trolling attempt, to get a response from you. It is important to understand and identify such intentions. And as difficult as it may be, do not respond. Getting into a direct interaction with a bully only makes things worse.

Report to the social network
You should report any instance of cyber bullying or harassment to the host social network—the website or forum on which the interaction happened. There are various methods of getting in touch with the moderators—customer support email, contact submission forms or even via phone, in certain locations. Describe the problem in detail, and persist till the offending account is blocked from the platform. “Most social networks have systems that allow you to report abusive content and users. However, there is great variance in the speed with which they respond across different platforms, jurisdictions, etc.,” says Sunil Abraham, executive director at the Bangalore-based non-profit research organization Centre for Internet and Society. New Delhi-based Anja Kovacs, project director, at civil society organization Internet Democracy Project, adds: “Blocking and reporting an account can be two ways to stop harassment on some social networks, but on other platforms, such as Twitter, it is possible for the person to immediately make a new account under a different username, meaning that these measures do not necessarily stop the harassment.” Ankhi Das, director, public policy, India and South Asia at social network Facebook, says: “Every reported piece of content is reviewed. Serial offenders are notified for non-compliance.” Facebook’s Community Standards, that prevent harassment and offensive posts, have an 11-point categorization for reported content—violence and threats, hate speech, graphic content, bullying and harassment, to name some. Raheel Khursheed, head of news, politics and government at Twitter India, did not respond to our mail about how Twitter handles trolls at the time of going to press. On blogs and forums, it may be a bit easier to deal with trolling and abuse. If it is your own blog, you can delete comments and block users. If it is a forum, the administrator can do it for you. But, with social networks having millions of users, it is not possible to have one administrator managing it all. And it is not just Facebook and Twitter, all social networks have a method by which you can register your complaint. LinkedIn, for example, automatically blocks a user who gets multiple “I don’t know” responses to invitations to connect. There is a strong monitoring policy where any reported content (recommendations or direct messages) is examined and immediate warnings are sent out to offending parties.

Keep a copy of the offensive posts
Be it a post, or a series of posts, direct message or even an offending photograph, always save it for future reference. Never assume that the matter will end soon, and always prepare for the worst.

Don’t ignore privacy settings
Most people start using Facebook, Twitter and other social networks without paying much attention to the privacy settings—what content people can see on your page, and who can directly contact you. Be conservative in sharing information—the less you share, the lower the chances of someone picking on you. “Avoid friending or linking to people whom you don’t know in real life unless you are certain of the chain of trust that exists between you and the unknown person,” says Abraham. New Delhi-based cyber lawyer Apar Gupta, adds: “The privacy settings on most social networking platforms allow users to prevent (restrict) the audience for their posts as well as strangers from contacting them. This will prevent most cases of online harassment.”

Get help from the law
In case social networks are not able to effectively block a user, or are in some way unwilling to do so, take help from the law-enforcement authorities. File an FIR in the nearest police station. Unfortunately, the progress may not be very smooth. The reality is that not every law-enforcement officer may know about social networking sites. “You could try and go to the police, but without support from the social network platform, they are often at a loss to do much themselves,” warns Kovacs. The police may look for hints of threat to cause bodily harm or worse still, to life. In such cases, they may recommend the case to the Cyber Crime Cell of the Central Bureau of Investigation. “Generally, while the substantive offences do exist under law, the process for having them enforced is deficient. These are deeper structural problems of delay, investigation and conviction which are prevalent across criminal justice or civil litigation,” clarifies Gupta. Officials at the Cyber Crime Cell say they take up cases after reference from the local police, who file the report first and do a preliminary level of investigation. But it is important to realize that only the police and the law-enforcement agencies have the right to demand further details about the perpetrator from the social networks, starting with profile details and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, which will help track the person down. Das clarifies: “Facebook has a point-of-contact system through which the law-enforcement agencies tell us what the actual case is, depending on severity. The police may ask us to take down particular content, or even ask for user information like IP info, to prevent real crime.” According to Facebook’s Government Requests Report for July-December 2013, the network restricted access to 4,765 pieces of content after requests from the Indian government and law-enforcement agencies.

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/livemint-july-22-2014-vishal-mathur-the-trouble-with-trolls

The quest for genuine clout on the internet

praskrishna — 2013-10-29T07:08:40Z

There is a lot of interest and speculation on the impact of social media on politics because of its amplification effects.

The article by Karthik Subramanian was published in the Hindu on October 13, 2013. T. Vishnu Vardhan is quoted.

There is no denying that it has overtaken the traditional media in certain facets of news - most notably when it comes to breaking news and that it provides grounds for expressing one's ideas unbounded.

But the marketing and the advertising world are only just coming to grips with the medium. (Twitter is set to launch its IPO soon and Facebook is going to increasingly face the need to monetize its services. The Web has a history of complaints where users have found it tough to different between user-generated content and 'promoted' content.)

In effect, the question of the “influence” that social media and its star patrons wield is still being assessed, especially in the loaded context of whether its proactive use would translate to votes in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections. Not only are the number of active social media users negligible in the Indian context, there are doubts on whether a 'cause and effect' scenario is possible.

There are two predominant points of view, while talking about the influence of social media campaigns on politics: One that closely reads the Facebook ‘likes’ and Twitter trends as an important measure of public pulse; and the other which dismisses any sort of influence that social media has on real and grass root level politics.

T. Vishnu Vardhan, a researcher at Bangalore-based Centre for Internet and Society, prefers the middle ground. “It is important to not ignore the growing popularity of social media in India with [telecom] service providers providing Facebook access at Rs. 1 for an entire day. However, I would refrain from seeing a direct correlation between a person's participation on social media to real-time events in society including politics.”

Propaganda fallacy

“In India and especially in Tamil Nadu it has been proved that the Propaganda Model is a fallacy. There is no simple formula, whether it be cinema of 1970s or the Social Media of the 2010s. There are too many factors and layers that influence real-time events.”

Companies around the world are trying to make sense of this 'Big Data' that people's digital lives are generating. And whilst individuals and even some clever campaigns make snap pronouncements based on superficial data and analysis, there are a few companies that are looking at it through the prism of complex algorithms and technology-enabled web crawling.

One such company Kochi-based startup Riafy Technologies is attempting to make sense of the digital noise in a broad sweeping sense looking at three domains: relational intelligence, predictive analysis and big data.

One of the their applications 'Movie Tarot' predicts the outcome of Friday releases at the movie box office, based on the digital traffic on the days preceding the release. Not every instance of praise or every denouncement is treated equally. Instead, they have an intelligent algorithm that they apply to predict the box office collections and the ultimate verdict. (They claim to have a fairly accurate track record thus far.)

The company's CEO John Mathew says there is a correlation between a person's online presence and behaviour in the real world. “This influence is significant in age groups of 18-34,” he says. “As for Lok Sabha elections, the 'social media influenced' voter turnout would be marginal when we look at the country as a whole, but this number would be substantial in the 'swing constituencies'.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/the-hindu-october-13-2013-karthik-subramanian-the-quest-for-genuine-clout-on-the-internet

The politics of Facebook

praskrishna — 2014-04-03T11:30:51Z

With the social media becoming an important political battleground, is Facebook affecting friendships and trying to influence our political leanings?

The article by Shweta Tiwari was published in Livemint on April 1, 2014. Dr. Nishant Shah is quoted.

When social activist Uthara Narayanan, 32, posted an innocuous article link on the Gujarat riots on Facebook in January, she was in for a surprise. An old friend from college fiercely defended Gujarat chief minister and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi, getting abrasive and personal in the post. “I had known her for more than 14 years and yet hadn’t seen this side to her,” says Narayanan. “I didn’t realize when she had gone off and gotten such strong views on the debate.”

From then on Narayanan decided to stay away from her friend though they live in the same city. “It left a bad taste in my mouth and marred our friendship for me, though I am still Facebook friends with her.” Almost as if agreeing with her, Facebook’s wall automatically started keeping her friend’s posts away from her wall—thanks to the EdgeRank algorithm.

Like-like stick together

EdgeRank, the Facebook algorithm that decides which posts to show in your newsfeed, bases its decision on three factors: an affinity score between the user and the one who’s created the post, the type of post (comment, like, create or tag), and time lapsed since it was created. The first basically means that you will see posts from friends you have interacted with and like to interact with on the social network.

In January, Catherine Grevet, a PhD student at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US, studied this algorithm in the light of politics and concluded that people tend to get attracted to circles of friends who affirm to their own political leanings, all because of Facebook’s algorithms. “People are mainly friends with those who share similar values and interests,” Grevet wrote in the study. “As a result, they aren’t exposed to opposing viewpoints.” Grevet presented the study at the 17th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing in the US in February.

Alok Sharma, a Mumbai-based creative writer who used to be a political cartoonist, says social media has led to Indians opening up. “We are taught to be a little politically correct, especially in face-to-face conversations. But when it comes to social networking sites, Indians express their views like fanatics,” he says. He blocked a couple of Facebook friends after a spate of personal comments on one of his posts. “My friends know me and get the crux of what I might be trying to say in a thread but there are others who are on my Friends list but don’t understand the context and take it all wrong.”

The misunderstanding arises because many of us post on the network as we would speak among friends and not as we would say things in public. “Facebook is not a community, a clique or a group of friends,” says Nishant Shah, director of research at Bangalore-based non-profit The Centre for Internet and Society. “It is just a network,” he says. That means that not all people on your Facebook list are friends—you are just connected to them on the network. You might have a professional relationship with them, be teammates or acquaintances or colleagues, but you don’t know them personally. Given that the average Facebook user has 229 Facebook friends—according to the numbers from US think tank Pew Research Center’s Internet Project which tracks statistics about the social network—that’s just too many people to even know personally.

“The audience on the social network is much larger than the friend list, including Facebook itself, which, if it finds your comment problematic, will censor even before a complaint is produced,” says Shah. A post on Facebook or a comment or a like, can get you in trouble not just with other individuals or communities who take offence but even the law, as happened to a girl in 2012 who put up a post criticizing the shutdown of Mumbai after the death of Shiv Sena patriarch Bal Thackeray.

“Though used like it, Facebook is not a conversation,” says Shah, “Because everything you write is archived and recorded. And can be used against you if need be.”

A medium to shout in

But would you shout at a stranger on the street as you do on Facebook? Basav Biradar, a programme manager based in Bangalore, actively posts on politics and comments on Facebook. He feels most people on Facebook give strong opinions that are not well-informed. “A lot of these opinions are dependent on propaganda and campaigns rather than facts. Why don’t people do some homework before forming an opinion?” With over 100 million Indians active on the social network, however, an uninformed opinion is hardly reason to stop anyone from posting, commenting, liking, offending and getting offended through posts on Facebook.

Shah calls this phenomenon cyber-bullying in politics. “Specific vocal and passionate groups and communities have emerged who silence any voice of dissent or critique by trolling the dissident,” says Shah. “They do not need anonymity. They don’t try to hide who they are. They feel so empowered by the backing of the politicos who are either hiring or supporting them, that they have risen in hordes and are stifling the space for dissent and questioning even more effectively than they have been able to do in real life.”

It’s almost like standing in a rally and hearing a swarm of slogans. Sashi Kumar, chairman of the trust Media Development Foundation that runs the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai, gives a similar analogy. He believes that the language of communication on Facebook is not written but oral. “Writing implies a well thought through opinion, whereas speech is responsive and involved. Within the Internet, there’s a strange morphing of written form which is expressed in a way of oral communication. You speak to someone on Facebook, you respond, you hear, you react, you communicate, you talk.” He says that this morphing is leading society back to more oral forms of communication where written forms like newspapers will be a thing of the past.

Replacing traditional media

	With surprising events like the support for Jan Lokpal law, Pink Chaddi campaign and even the backlash against the December 2012 gang rape case in Delhi, social media seems to have somewhere, somehow made all of us more participative, more aware and more active in political and social spaces. Most politicians have active Twitter and Facebook accounts. Most newspapers and even news channels quote their feed as statements when summing up news. Social networks have become almost mainstream. So much so that when earlier in March Modi attacked Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar at a political rally in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, Kumar’s response was detailed, and through a Facebook post.

With surprising events like the support for Jan Lokpal law, Pink Chaddi campaign and even the backlash against the December 2012 gang rape case in Delhi, social media seems to have somewhere, somehow made all of us more participative, more aware and more active in political and social spaces.

Most politicians have active Twitter and Facebook accounts. Most newspapers and even news channels quote their feed as statements when summing up news. Social networks have become almost mainstream. So much so that when earlier in March Modi attacked Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar at a political rally in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, Kumar’s response was detailed, and through a Facebook post.

A joint study by the IRIS Knowledge Foundation, a public service initiative of business and financial information provider IRIS Business Services Pvt. Ltd, and the industry body Internet and Mobile Association of India, suggests that social media use is now sufficiently widespread to influence the outcome of the next general election and consequently government formation. The March research, which studied Facebook’s own data, claims that among the social media spaces, Facebook users have the maximum clout.

Kumar agrees and feels that news now is more user-generated: “It’s the people who want to pursue their own news, know more about their own news, create news. In a way it democratizes journalism. People are talking more about issues, giving opinions and comparing notes. Politics has shifted from the streets to these social medias.”

The future holds more participation, and a sense of being a stakeholder in the political process. An “enlarging of political participation”, as Kumar puts it. “Of course because everyone has a mike, a mouthpiece now, there will be lot of more trivial conversation and hairsplitting which might not add up to anything, but the important thing is that people are engaging themselves politically. We are on the streets. All because of technology.”

For more details visit https://cis-india.org/news/livemint-april-1-2014-shweta-taneja-the-politics-of-facebook